PRINCETON,  N.  J. 


AC  8  . M69  1878  v.| 

Mozley,  J.  B.  1813-1878. 
Essays,  historical  and 
theological 


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ESSAYS 


HISTORICAL  AND  THEOLOGICAL 


J.  B.  MOZLEY,  D.D. 

LATE  CANON  OF  CHRIST  CHURCH,  AND  REGIUS  PROFESSOR  OF  DIVINITY 
IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  OXFORD 


IN  TWO  VOLUMES 
VOL.  I. 


ipexo  ffortv 

* 

E.  P.  DUTTON  AND  COMPANY 


MDCCCLXXVIII 


TO  THE 

REV.  JOHN  WORDSWORTH,  M.A. 

HON.  CANON  OF  LINCOLN 

THE  VALUED  FRIEND  OF  LATER  YEARS 

WHOSE  NAME 

THE  AUTHOR  WOULD  HAVE  GLADLY  SEEN 
THUS  CONNECTED  WITH  HIS  OWN 

&fjese  Uolttmes 


ARE  GRATEFULLY  INSCRIBED. 


CONTENTS  OF  VOL.  I. 

VAGB 

Introduction,  .  .  .  .  .  .  xi 


LORD  STRAFFORD. 

His  birth — Parentage — Education — State  of  the  nation  at  the 
commencement  of  his  career — His  politics — His  general 
character — His  opposition  to  Buckingham,  and  to  a 
demand  of  a  contribution  from  the  Crown — The  impetu¬ 
osity  of  his  temper — Pym — Made  Lieutenant  of  Ireland — 
Calls  an  Irish  Parliament — Poyning’s  Act — Lords  of  the 
Pale — Opens  the  session — His  care  of  the  Church — Laud 
— Irish  Church  campaign — His  quarrel  with  the  Earl  of 
Cork — The  Thirty-nine  Articles  substituted  for  those  of 
Lambeth — Assails  the  aristocracy — Commission  of  Planta¬ 
tions — Proceedings  in  Galway — Intrepid  behaviour  of 
young  Ormond — The  linen  trade  established — Reform  of 
the  Customs — The  Mint — Strafford’s  untiring  energy  and 
capacity  for  business — Case  of  Lord  Mountnorris,  and 
of  the  Chancellor  Loftus — The  King’s  distrust — Lord 
Clanricarde’s  case — Strafford  is  refused  promotion  in  the 
peerage — Revisits  England — Struggle  between  the  Church 
and  Puritanism — His  measures  of  defence — Placed  at  the 
head  of  the  army — Further  proceedings  stayed  by  the 
King — Strafford  is  arraigned — Imprisoned — The  trial — 

The  bill  of  attainder — Mr.  Hallam’s  defence  of  the  bill — 
Strafford’s  execution,  .  .  .  .  1 


Vlll 


Contents. 


ARCHBISHOP  LAUD. 

PAGE 

Biographies  of  Land — Heylin’s  Life— Birth,  infancy,  and  edu¬ 
cation  of  Laud— Enters  Oxford— State  of  the  University 
— Reynolds — Prevalence  of  Calvinism — Laud’s  ordination 
— His  collisions  with  the  University — His  degree  of  B.D. 

— Sermon — Sermon  on  Shrove  Tuesday — Abbot — Lord 
President  of  St.  John’s — The  connection  of  the  ecclesiastic 
with  the  Churchman — Church  and  State — Laud  attends 
the  Court — Laud  and  Buckingham — Laud  a  politician — 

The  Parliament — Williams  and  Abbot — Abbot’s  fall  and 
death — Laud’s  ecclesiastical  rise — Bishop  of  St.  David’s, 

Bath  and  Wells,  London,  Canterbury — Laud  the  minister 
—The  Court — His  Oxford  entertainment — His  Lambeth 
life — His  esoteric  life — His  penitence,  devotion,  prayers, 
and  inner  religion — His  patronage  of  religion — Ferrar — 
Little  Gidding — Laud’s  culminating  point — Montague — 
Laud’s  sermon  to  the  second  Parliament — Laud’s  ecclesi¬ 
astical  reforms — The  Puritans — Their  doctrine,  discipline 
— Laud’s  hatred  of  Calvinism — Royal  instructions — De¬ 
claration  on  the  Thirty-nine  Articles — Patronage — Cere¬ 
monial — Injunctions  about  the  altar — The  Sabbatarian 
question — Book  of  Sports — Compulsion— Laud’s  treatment 
of  officials — Economical  reforms — Restoration  of  St.  Paul’s 
—  Strafford’s  viceregalty  —  The  Scotch  Church  —  The 
Church  theory — Rise  of  the  clergy,  of  discipline,  of  im- 

«-  proved  theology,  and  literature — Puritan  libels — Their 
effect  on  Laud — Laud’s  administration  of  Oxford,  of  the 
Treasury —  Laud  and  Strafford  —  Comprehensiveness  of 
Laud’s  character  —  Laud  a  priest  —  His  impatience  — 
Clarendon — Laud  and  Clarendon — Evil  influences — The 
Parliament — The  Tower — The  Great  Rebellion — The 
Westminster  Assembly — Laud’s  trial — His  speech  on  the 
scaffold — His  execution — Laud’s  visionary  pursuit — His 
successes,  .  .  .  .  .  .  .106 


Contents. 


ix 


CARLYLE’S  CROMWELL. 

PAGE 

Carlyle’s  idea  of  heroism — Its  moral  result — Old  notion  of  a 
hero — Discordant  with  Mr.  Carlyle’s  contrast  between  the 
ideas  of  strength  and  beauty — Mr.  Carlyle’s  estimate  of 
Puritanism  —  His  method  of  reform  —  Mr.  Garlyle  not 
master  of  his  own  mind — His  inconsistencies — His  cant 
against  cant  —  Puritanism  —  Cromwell  commences  his 
career — Forms  his  men — Divine  agency — Cromwell’s 
humility — His  avenues  to  power — His  subtlety — Crom¬ 
well  contrives  the  King’s  death — Mr.  Carlyle’s  reflections 
on  the  King’s  murder — Cromwell’s  Irish  war — His  Scotch 
war — Cromwell  and  the  Parliament — Cromwell  Lord 
Protector — His  keenness  in  business — His  management  of 
parties — His  speeches — The  offer  of  the  Crown — Character 
of  his  Protectorate — Was  Cromwell  a  hypocrite  1 — Mr. 
Carlyle’s  theory — Objections  to  it — Cromwell’s  ambition 
— His  fanaticism — General  estimate  of  Cromwell’s  char¬ 
acter,  .......  229 


LUTHER. 

Opposite  views  of  Luther — D’Aubign6’s  Biography,  Audin’s, 
Michelet’s — Luther’s  practical  character — His  melancholy 
— His  aspirations — Human  helplessness — Tendency  of 
moral  goodness — Sense  of  imperfection — Application  to 
Luther — The  dogma  of  man’s  natural  depravity — Its  ap¬ 
plication  to  imputation — Practical  view  of  this  doctrine 
— Lutheran  view  of  justification  —  Faith,  extra-moral  — 
Catholic  doctrine  of  faith  —  Its  incompatibility  with 
Luther’s  view — Completion  of  Luther’s  system — Luther’s 
life — Character  of  the  age — The  indulgences — Luther  a 
Reformer — His  history — Position  of  Luther — The  war 
with  Rome — His  coarse  vituperation — His  constitutional 
bias — Luther’s  theory  of  individual  priesthood — Luther 
creates  a  new  society — Excesses  of  the  Reform  movement 


X 


Contents. 


PAGE 


— Its  doctrinal  extravagances — Especially  on  the  Eucha¬ 
rist — The  Epistle  of  St.  James — Luther’s  license  with 
respect  to  marriage — Hare’s  Apology  for  Luther — This 
Apology  examined— Luther’s  morbid  temper — Failure  of 
the  Reformation  oppresses  Luther — Effects  of  Luther’s 
works  on  Germany — Luther’s  private  life — His  nationality 
— Practical  consequences — Recapitulation, 


321 


Note,  , 


.  439 


INTRODUCTION. 


In  presenting  the  reader  with  the  following  reprints  of 
articles  and  papers,  selected  on  different  grounds  from  the 
work  of  thirty  years  of  a  busy  though  retired  life,  some 
words  may  be  allowed  on  the  habits  and  growth  of  a  mind 
whose  full  powers  have  only  recently  been  recognised  by  the 
world.  It  is  not  in  place  here  to  dwell  on  the  literary  merits 
of  their  author — of  these  the  public  are  the  judge, — but  on  one 
particular  point  light  may  be  thrown  by  the  knowledge  and 
experience  of  personal  intimacy.  Perhaps  one  characteristic 
of  Dr.  Mozley’s  style  will  be  universally  acknowledged — his 
strong  grasp  of  the  views  he  advocates,  and  the  tenacity  of 
his  hold  of  them.  Probably  nothing  tells  so  much  on  a  reader 
who  recognises  an  able  mind  at  work  as  this  fidelity  to  lead¬ 
ing  ideas.  This  tenacity  of  hold  makes  all  the  difference,  it 
would  sometimes  appear,  between  a  writer  of  weight  and 
another  of  equal  and  perhaps  more  versatile  powers,  who,  for 
no  evident  reason,  fails  in  this  effect.  A  ready  pen  and 
quick  apprehension  may  seem  to  embrace  the  whole  bearings 
of  a  subject,  and  be  able  to  place  it  before  other  minds  with  a 
clearness  and  force  which  leave  nothing  to  be  desired ;  but 
something  is  wanting  which  time  explains,  when  the  views 
thus  ably  argued  are  seen  to  have  been  a  recent  acquirement, 
and  to  have  only  had  their  turn  in  the  writer’s  mind.  If 


Xll 


Introduction. 


they  have  been  “  taken  up/’  if  they  sncceed  other  opinions, 
opposed  in  principle  or  distinct  in  kind,  whatever  the  ap¬ 
parent  force  of  present  conviction,  they  will  not  have  lasting 
weight  with  the  reader.  They  will  only  affect  him  as  they 
affect,  and  in  the  degree  they  affect,  and  retain  their  hold  on  the 
writer  himself.  It  may  he  said  that  no  one  impresses  other  minds 
more  deeply  and  lastingly  than  as  he  is  himself  impressed. 

There  can  he  no  doubt  that  the  impression  of  Dr.  Mozley’s 
published  works  has  been  a  strong  one ;  an  impression  re¬ 
cognised  and  telling.  And  those  who  have  known  their  author 
from  childhood,  who  can  follow  his  course  from  the  first 
dawn  of  thought,  think  they  see  the  reason  of  this  in  the 
mastery  of  certain  leading  ideas  over  his  own  mind  ;  in  the 
extraordinary  degree  in  which  the  same  subjects  of  thought, 
however  inevitably  varied  in  external  aspect,  have  occupied 
him.  His  was  a  life  singularly  one  in  the  unbroken  course  of 
its  interests  ;  that  is  to  say,  the  interests  which  occupied  him 
always  evinced  the  same  strain  of  thought.  He  viewed  them 
according  to  the  impulses  and  habits  of  the  age  in  which  they 
were  entertained,  whether  eager  sensitive  boyhood,  keen 
vigorous  youth,  or  philosophical  manhood ;  but  they  never 
relaxed  their  hold ;  they  were  never  forgotten,  never  super¬ 
seded  by  other  interests.  The  great  truths  of  faith  were 
pursued  in  the  dawn  of  life  with  all  the  animation  and  glad 
confidence  of  the  morning ;  when  manhood  followed  with  its 
checks  and  disappointments,  its  calls  to  self-reliance  and 
independence,  they  were  the  constant  occupation  of  time  and 
thought ;  in  the  full  maturity  of  his  powers  they  were 
maintained  and  vindicated  with  a  proportionate  force  of  con¬ 
viction  ;  when  the  blow  fell  they  were  still  the  stay,  the 
resource,  the  comfort,  the  natural  home  of  mind  and  hope. 


I ntroduction. 


xm 


Memory  in  other  directions  might  slip  and  waver,  but  the 
strong  grasp  of  the  great  leading  principles  which  had  guided 
thought  never  lost  their  hold. 

This  strength  of  hold  was  indeed  a  characteristic  of  tem¬ 
perament  as  well  as  of  thought ;  what  he  desired  he  desired 
with  intensity.  His  childish  longing  for  home,  expressed  to 
his  mother  in  one  of  his  schoolboy  letters,  reminds  the  reader 
of  Cowper’s  line — 

“With  what  intense  desire  he  wants  his  home  !” 

“  When  I  think  of  you  at  the  present  time,  all  seated  by 
the  tire,  so  homely  and  comfortably,  my  spirits  do  seem  to 
fail  me  ;  but  I  think  a  letter  from  you  would  set  them  up  in 
a  great  degree,  and  you  are  in  the  habit  of  writing.  I  don’t 
think  it  would  be  much  trouble  to  you  just  to  sit  down  when 
it  may  be  convenient  to  you  and  write  me  a  few  lines.  I 
don’t  want  to  hear  any  news  ;  it  is  not  that  that  I  want,  but 
there  is  something  in  a  letter  from  home  that  would  cheer  me.” 

Born  at  Gainsborough,  Lincolnshire,  September  15,181 3,  he 
had  been  sent  early  to  Grantham, — a  school  which,  it  has  been 
observed,  has  had  the  good  fortune  to  turn  out  many  good  men, 
including  Sir  Isaac  Newton.  But  school  had  no  compensations 
for  his  early  boyhood.  Its  pleasures  were  not  to  his  mind.  He 
was  no  lover  of  games.  “  Thinking  was  part  of  his  diversion,” 
and  home  was  in  his  mind  the  home  of  thought  as  well  as  of 
the  affections.  For  his  opinions  were  as  strong  as  his  feelings 
at  this  early  age.  His  eldest  sister  (who  died  young),  in  her 
journal,  after  reporting  her  little  brother’s  judgment  against 
rhymes  as  “  only  invented  to  hide  bad  poetry — blank  verse 
so  much  more  noble  ” — writes  :  “  There  is  mostly  a  good  deal 
of  justice  in  his  observations,  yet  the  decided,  unqualified,  and 
determined  way  in  which  he  expresses  them  makes  them 


XIV 


Introduction. 


appear  amusingly  extravagant.”  Every  record  of  him  shows 
him  in  the  same  character.  This  word  “  noble  ”  explains  the 
effect  upon  his  earliest  thought  of  what  was  great  and  impres¬ 
sive.  Human  greatness,  what  was  striking  and  noble  in  charac¬ 
ter  and  career,  caught  his  infant  ear,  and  stimulated  thought 
and  expectation.  He  had  early  glimpses  into  the  meaning 
of  things,  and  recognised  the  greatness  of  ideas  under  their 
symbols.  Thus  his  imagination  was  visibly  kindled  by  the 
spectacle  of  a  court  of  justice.  It  was  the  idea  of  judgment — 
of  the  judge,  not  the  prisoner, — that  told  upon  him  as  a  child, 
with  a  force  of  which  some  of  his  later  works  bear  the  trace. 

And  it  may  be  said  that  the  controversial  spirit  showed 
itself  equally  early,  as  it  certainly  prevailed  in  him  to  the 
last.  This  spirit  woke  in  him  in  the  nursery.  The  all- 
pervading  controversy  of  the  day  fell  on  listening  ears,  and  he 
was  found  disputing,  as  the  advocate  of  Free-will,  with  his 
excellent  nurse,  whom  he  considered  to  be  led  away  by  the 
sophisms  of  a  popular  curate.1  From  a  child — and  as  the 
eighth  of  a  large  family,  it  is  no  inconsiderable  testimony  to 
emphasis  and  force  of  character — his  notions,  his  likes  and 
dislikes,  impressed  themselves  on  the  memory  of  those  about 
him.  His  manner  and  neat  diction  secured  attention  to  the 
“  gentlemanly  small  boy,”  as,  at  four  years  old,  a  quaint 
bachelor  friend  defined  him.  Spirited,  sensitive,  refined,  serene 
in  air,  but  impetuous  on  occasion,  not  helpful  with  his  hands, 
and  willing  to  be  waited  on ;  and,  as  one  memory  recalls  him, 
“  with  noble  bearing  and  generous  look,”  he  made  his  impression 

1  “  It  ought  to  be  mentioned,”  writes  a  correspondent,  “  that  for  many 
years,  indeed  from  about  the  first  year  James  was  taken  to  church,  he  had 
to  hear  every  Sunday  Calvinistic  sermons  framed  on  the  Simeonite  model, 
and  that,  contrary  to  the  usual  habit  of  boys,  he  listened  to  the  sermon  and 
bottled  up  his  objections.” 


Introduction. 


xv 


on  his  own  little  world,  and  was  indeed  a  child  of  remarkable 
grace  and  promise.  As  in  character  the  child  was  father  of 
the  man,  so  we  find  the  same  subjects  of  thought  possessing  a 
natural  attraction.  Thus  from  school,  in  a  letter,  asking  at  the 
same  time  for  a  volume  of  Bacon,  he  writes  (cet.  thirteen)  to 
his  mother  :  “  I  have  gone  into  Lucretius,  a  book  full  of  odd 
opinions  and  deistical  notions.  In  short,  he  is  called  the 
deistical  poet;  but  as  many  of  his  opinions  have  long  ago 
been  refuted,  you  need  be  in  no  fear  of  my  getting  them  into 
my  head,  especially  as  many  of  them  seem  to  me  absurd.” 
Later  on  (at  fifteen)  the  turn  for  controversy  developed  in  the 
nursery  was  called  into  keener  exercise  as  defender  of  the 
Creeds  against  the  cavils  of  his  sisters’  mathematical  master — 
a  thinker  in  his  turn,  of  the  school  of  Dr.  Erasmus  Darwin 
(who  founded  a  Philosophical  Society  in  Derby),  and  no  incon¬ 
siderable  opponent, — one  who  has  his  marked  representative 
in  the  thought  of  our  day,  but  whose  questionings  fell 
powerless  on  the  ears  of  a  childish  audience,  proud  of, 
and  implicitly  relying  on,  the  young  champion  of  orthodoxy, 
so  ready  with  his  arguments,  so  confident  of  his  ground. 
On  account  of  the  then  declining  state  of  Grantham  School, 
he  had  been  removed  from  it,  and  on  report  of  the  rising 
reputation  of  Rugby,  his  father  applied  for  his  admission 
there,  a  destination  prevented  by  Dr.  Arnold’s  rule  to  receive 
no  boy  after  the  age  of  fifteen. 

His  first  acquaintance  with  Oxford  had  been  made  before 
this.  As  his  brother  (the  Rev.  T.  M.)  writes  to  a  local 
journal  in  correction  of  a  mistake, — “  At  the  age  of  thir¬ 
teen  I  brought  him  up  to  Oxford  to  try  for  a  scholarship  at 
Corpus,  when  his  age  and  boyish  looks  were  fatal  to  him. 
His  translation  in  verse  from  Homer  at  that  age  would,  I 


XVI 


Introduction. 


think,  justify  the  opinion  I  then  had  of  his  powers.”  There 
are  those  who  remember  him,  as  he  first  made  his  appearance  in 
his  brother’s  rooms,  a  little  fellow  in  a  jacket,  which  had  to  be 
exchanged  for  “  laps  ”  before  the  examination.  And  the  letter 
which  tells  of  his  failure  reports  that  he  was  called  in  by  the 
President  and  Fellows,  who  told  him  they  had  been  much  pleased 
with  his  examination,  that  he  had  passed  second  best,  and 
would  certainly  have  been  chosen  but  for  his  extreme  youth.1 
After  an  interval  of  private  tuition  at  home  he  was  admitted 
at  seventeen  (Oct.  1830)  into  Oriel  College,  of  which  his  brother 
was  Fellow.  There  his  admiration  and  sympathy  were  at  once 
awakened  by  the  circle  of  his  brother’s  friends,  amongst  whom 
were  the  leading  thinkers  of  the  University,  by  whom  he  was 
most  kindly  received,  first  for  his  brother’s  sake,  and  soon  for 
his  own.  Whatever  effect  this  extension  of  his  interests  might 
have  on  his  degree,  it  had  undoubtedly  a  very  powerful  in¬ 
fluence  in  enlarging  and  developing  his  mind. 

Thus  from  his  first  entrance  upon  College  life  grave  topics, 
as  his  home  letters  testify,  occupied  him ;  but  under  circum¬ 
stances  of  peculiar  attraction.  He  was  especially  open  to  the 
sweet  flattery  of  admission  to  the  thought  of  those  he  most 
looked  up  to,  expressed  in  the  gay,  careless  undress  of  familiar 
intercourse.  In  November  1832  he  writes  of  Hurrell  Froude’s 
approaching  departure  on  the  journey  since  recorded  in  the 
Apologia : — 

“  Froude  is  obliged,  contrary  to  his  inclination,  to  give  up  the 
idea  of  going  to  Egypt.  This  must  be  a  great  disappointment  to 
him,  as  old  relics  of  superstition  are  what,  above  all  other  things, 

1  Candidates  were  admitted  for  examination  at  Corpus  at  an  exception¬ 
ally  early  age.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Keble  won  bis  scholarship  at 
fourteen  and  eight  months.  In  the  present  case  it  happened  that  immediate 
residence  would  be  necessary,  which,  of  course,  was  out  of  the  question. 


Introduction . 


XVII 


he  delights  in.  He  does  not  care  so  much  for  classical  remains  as 
those  of  Greece  or  Italy.”  .  .  .  “  Froude  is  growing  stronger  and 
stronger  in  his  sentiments  every  day,  and  cuts  about  him  on  all  sides. 
It  is  extremely  fine  to  hear  him  talk.  The  aristocracy  of  the  country 
at  present  are  the  chief  objects  of  his  dislike  and  vituperation. 
And  he  decidedly  sets  himself  up  against  the  modern  character  of 
the  gentleman,  and  thinks  that  the  Church  will  eventually  depend 
for  its  support,  as  it  always  did  in  its  most  influential  time,  on  the 
very  poorest  classes  of  the  country.”  [The  letter  going  on  to  give 
the  heads  of  ‘Newman’s’  last  Sunday’s  sermon.]  “Excuse  for  sin 
on  the  ground  of  necessity,  in  which  he  attacked  the  modern  idea 
of  the  irresistible  march  of  society.” 

Of  the  attraction  of  his  youthful  manner  many  chance 
private  testimonies  remain.  The  brightness  and  humour,  the 
gaiety  and  hope  of  youth,  brought  to  enliven  subjects  that 
more  commonly  occupy  graver  and  older  men,  made  to  many 
an  unusual  combination ;  and  with  it  there  was, — what  all  who 
knew  him  must  have  felt  a  marked  characteristic  through  life, — 
a  genuine  deference  for  the  opinion  of  others  ;  arising  out  of 
his  habit  of  estimating  persons  by  his  own  private  measure, 
apt  to  be  a  favourable  one,  rather  than  by  their  received  place 
or  standing,  whether  in  the  world’s  judgment  or  their  own. 
He  expected  to  find  the  people  he  met  with  worth  listening  to, 
and  perhaps  therefore  found  them  so ;  for  there  is  no  greater 
stimulus  to  thought  than  the  perception  that  the  thought  will 
have  its  fair  chance  with  the  hearer.  One  whimsical  testi¬ 
mony  to  these  social  qualities  is  met  with,  as  given  by  a  family 
friend,  a  clergyman  of  high  cultivation  and  refinement,  who 
had  striven  to  impart  these  gifts  to  a  long  succession  of  private 
pupils.  “Mr.  W.,”  writes  his  wife,  “has  enjoyed  himself  very 
much,  and  ever  and  anon  has  soliloquised  after  this  fashion : 
‘Astonishing!’  ‘What  is  astonishing?’  ‘Why,  that  I  should 
like  the  company  of  a  young  man  ;  but  this  one  just  suits  me  ; 
I  am  never  tired  of  him,  never  wish  him  away.’  ” 

M.E.-I.]  1 


xviii  Introduction. 

A  chance  testimony  of  a  contemporary  in  undergraduate 
days  tells  of  an  effect  produced, — ■“  he  suffered  nothing  evil  to 
come  near  him.”  This  would,  in  his  case,  be  the  natural  effect 
of  an  inherent  refinement  and  purity  rather  than  of  conscious 
action  on  others.  A  love  of  protest  was  not  part  of  him.  dSTo  one 
had  less  the  impulse  to  tell  people  of  their  faults ;  he  rarely  did 
it  himself,  he  did  not  take  kindly  to  the  practice  in  others.  Thus, 
telling  of  an  interchange  of  home  truths  between  two  acquaint¬ 
ances  of  equal  candour  and  strength  of  views,  he  writes  :  “  You 
see  we  are  getting  very  plain-spoken  here.  I  suppose  telling 
people  of  their  faults  in  a  serious  way  ought  not  by  right  to  offend 
one’s  taste,  and  yet  it  is  such  an  inroad  on  the  system  of  manners 
in  which  one  has  been  brought  up  that  it  is  difficult  to  recon¬ 
cile  one’s-self  to  it.”  To  reprove  well  is  indeed  a  great  and 
invaluable  gift ;  it  may  be  that  he  was  without  it,  but  the 
impulse  often  proceeds  from  a  narrow  view  both  of  evil  and  its 
counteracting  influences,  on  the  vain  idea  that  a  word  can  set 
so  much  wrong  right.  The  largeness  of  view  that  was  a  charac¬ 
teristic  of  his,  the  same  principle  which  kept  him  in  maturer 
life  from  sudden  and  hasty  action  at  every  call  of  danger  to  the 
faith,  may  have  told  also  on  his  closer  intercourse  with  mankind. 
From  a  boy  he  could  be  contemptuous  enough  on  what  was  low 
in  tastes  or  propensities  ;  a  contempt  sometimes  expressed  with 
a  severity  of  youthful  scorn  which  gave  an  early  foretaste  of  his 
vigour  of  style  ;  but  his  humility  preserved  him  from  harsh  judg¬ 
ments  on  social  intercourse  in  its  more  trifling  phases;  a  humility 
assisted,  as  time  went  on,  by  penetration.  Thus  he  reflects 
(1837):  “I  suppose  by  rights  one  ought  to  shake  one’s  head 
and  look  grave  at  this  style  of  thing,  only  that  experience  tells 
one  that  the  follies  of  the  wise  and  the  follies  of  the  foolish  are 
not  at  such  an  immense  distance  from  each  other  after  all. 


Introduction . 


xix 


Not  that  I  mean  to  rank  myself  among  the  wise  —  on  the 
contrary.” 

Some  passages  from  home  letters  (1833),  written  at  the  age 
of  nineteen,  show  how  much  his  thoughts  were  engaged  in  the 
state  of  feeling  that  issued  in  44  the  Movement.”  People  were 
reading  Lamennais’  L’ Avenir,  and  his  Tory  feeling  shows  itself 
in  a  tone  of  suspicion  : — 

“  What  do  you  think,”  he  asks,  “  of  the  Democratical  High 
Church  school  %  .  .  .  I  have  no  doubt  their  views  will  before  long 
assume  a  greater  prominence  than  most  people  are  at  present  aware. 
Of  course  one  must  regard  them  as  extremely  dangerous.  How 
can  one  answer  for  the  result  when  we  introduce  into  people’s  minds 
totally  new  notions,  notions  of  power,  however  well  attached  they 
may  have  been  to  the  Church  when  altogether  excluded  from  the 
political  world,  and  naturally  accustomed  to  consider  themselves  as 
mere  subjects,  governed  without  any  reference  to  their  own  will  ] 
I  don’t  exactly  know  what  Froude  [who  had  recently  returned  from 
his  tour]  thinks  of  those  notions  he  has  imported  from  France.  In 
fact,  he  does  not  know  himself,  and  he  says,  moreover,  that  there 
is  no  necessity  for  us  in  this  country  to  form  any  judgment  upon 
them.  ...  I  would  not  set  down  everything  that  Froude  says  for 
his  deliberate  opinion,  for  he  really  hates  the  present  state  of  things 
so  excessively  that  any  change  would  be  a  relief  to  him.” 

Again,  in  describing  the  Commemoration  of  1833,  he  tells 

of  Keble’s  oration  as  Professor  of  Poetry,  which, 

“  instead  of  being,  as  it  generally  is,  a  stupid  harangue  about  sub¬ 
jects  of  no  interest,  was  a  splendid  panegyric  on  4  Gulielmus  Laud, 
Episcopus  et  Martyr;’  of  course  referring,  as  the  occasion  required, 
only  to  his  conduct  in  the  University,  and  not  to  his  political  or 
ecclesiastical  character, — not  but  that  the  two  latter  points  came  in 
incidentally  pretty  often.  .  .  .  The  conclusion  was  a  very  magni¬ 
ficent  one  :  4  As  soon  as  ever  the  University  forsakes  its  old  course, 
and  gives  itself  up  to  the  influence  of  the  world  at  large,  or  to  the 
insane  pride  of  an  intellectual  philosophy,  it  is  all  over  with  its 
dignity  and  its  religion.’  This  given  in  a  rolling  Latin  sentence, 
accompanied  with  six- syllabled  epithets,  two  or  three  at  a  time, 
sounded  very  splendid,  and  was  loudly  cheered  in  the  gallery.  The 
whole  oration  was  very  fairly  attended  to,  a  most  extraordinary 
occurrence,  and  the  good  sentiments,  whenever  they  came  in  a 
tangible  form,  met  with  due  encouragement.  .  .  .  Froude  is  stay- 


XX 


Introduction. 


ing  up,  and  I  see  a  great  deal  of  him.  He  is  now  sending  a  very 
interesting  Thomas  a  Becket  to  the  British  Magazine  ....  Rose 
rather  hesitates  at  present  in  receiving  Froude’s  ferocious  article, 
alleging  that  the  argument  on  which  he  supposes  the  union  between 
Church  and  State  to  have  been  hitherto  supported,  the  one  given  in 
Hooker,  is  not,  practically  speaking,  the  one  on  which  it  has  stood  in 
the  minds  of  men  for  a  long  time.  Hooker’s  defence  of  the  union  goes 
entirely  on  the  supposition  of  the  Church  and  State  being  the  same 
body  in  different  relations.  This  is  manifestly  not  the  case  now. 
.  .  .  Froude  is  most  enthusiastic  in  his  plans,  and  says,  ‘  What  fun 
it  is  living  in  times  like  these  !  how  could  one  now  go  back  to  the 
times  of  old  Tory  humbug  V  Newman  has  not  come  back  ;  this 
is  the  time  of  long  calms  in  the  Mediterranean.  .  .  .  Wilson,  the 
Boden  Professor,  delivered  his  first  lecture  a  fortnight  ago,  a  very 
interesting  one — the  Sanscrit  quotations  most  amusing.” 

A  few  days  after  he  writes  : — ■ 

u  July  4,  1833. — That  was  rather  a  rash  promise  of  mine  to 
write  again  in  a  few  days.  Two  or  three  days  being  now  past,  I 
find  I  have  nothing  to  tell  you  but  the  old  story  over  again,  which, 
perhaps,  you  may  be  rather  tired  of  by  this  time,  for  I  think  it  has 
composed  the  substance  of  all  my  letters  for  the  last  three  months, 
viz.,  Church  and  State,  and  the  British  Magazine  and  Froude  and 
Newman,  and  French  and  Roman  Catholics.  ...  I  learnt  one 
piece  of  news  from  Miss  N.,  on  good  authority,  as  every  piece 
of  news  has  since  the  foundation  of  the  world,  that  Keble  was 
going  to  marry.  What  will  the  monks  and  the  misogamists  say 
to  this  1  Froude  told  me  the  other  day  that  Keble  used  to 
think  marriage  a  suitable  state  for  parish  priests,  but  he  seemed  to 
think  that  these  stirring  times  must  have  driven  such  quiet  notions 
out  of  his  head  long  ago.  He  is  perpetually  sneering  at  W.  for 
his  tergiversation  in  a  kind  of  mixed  strain  of  pity  and  sarcasm. 
Whether  Keble’s  example  will  soften  down  his  sternness  or  not,  I 
don’t  know.  It  is  impossible  to  talk  with  Froude  without  com¬ 
mitting  one’s-self  on  such  subjects  as  these,  so  that  by  and  by  I 
expect  the  tergiversants  will  be  a  considerable  party.” 

It  is  felt  that  such  lively  one-sided  records  scarcely  do 
justice  to  the  depth  and  intensity  of  Hurrell  Froude’s  character; 
these  will  be  found  dwelt  upon  in  one  of  the  following  papers. 
But  in  reading  of  these  enthusiastic  and  daring  sayings,  it  must 
be  remembered  that  life  was  to  him  a  bounded  prospect,  that  he 
lived  with  a  doom  hanging  over  him,  and  had  to  act  as  it 


Introduction . 


xxi 


were  in  haste,  and  condense  his  thought  into  epigram. 
None  who  have  ever  seen  him  can  wonder  at  the  devo¬ 
tion  of  his  friends.  A  year  or  two  later  than  the  date 
of  letters  from  which  these  quotations  are  taken,  it  chanced 
to  the  present  writer  to  be  a  witness  of  his  return  to  Ox¬ 
ford, — for  the  moment  a  surprise, — from  his  last  search  after 
health  at  Barbadoes ;  a  scene  of  welcome  not  to  be  for¬ 
gotten  ;  mingled,  as  the  joy  evidently  was,  by  secret  misgiving 
and  dismay,  at  the  attenuated  form  and  features,  from  which 
illness  could  not  remove  the  fine  grace  of  outline  and  keen  play 
of  expression.  The  next  day  he  took  his  part  in  a  public  con¬ 
test,  with  a  sort  of  passionate  zest  at  finding  himself  once  more 
among  friends  and  opponents.  It  was  probably  one  of  the  last 
scenes  of  the  kind  in  which  he  could  take  a  part.  Of  the  im¬ 
pression  he  made  on  all  who  came  within  the  sphere  of  his 
attractions,  a  few  words  in  a  letter  of  some  months’  later  date, 
written  by  one  not  given  to  the  melting  mood,  bears  evidence  : 
“  Who  can  refrain  from  tears  at  the  thought  of  that  bright  and 
beautiful  Froude  !  He  is  not  expected  to  last  long.” 

It  will  be  understood  that  Hurrell  Froude’s  was  not  the  only 
leading  mind  by  whom  “  young  Mozley  ”  (one  distinction  by 
which  he  was  then  known)  was  influenced.  The  power  of  “  New¬ 
man”  over  the  minds  of  younger  men  who  enjoyed  the  privilege 
of  his  intimacy  is  a  fact  of  history.  Every  letter  of  this  period 
shows  some  trace  of  it.  Some  letters  bear  immediately  on 
passages  in  the  Apologia ,  in  amusing  and  interesting  con¬ 
firmation  of  states  of  mind  and  opinion  described  there.  A 
keen  critic  of  style  always,  “  J.  H.  N.’s”  style  strikes  him 
in  the  letters  from  abroad  which  are  read  before  him — 

“  This  [a  view  on  the  Italian  character]  is  what  Newman  tells 
Christie  in  a  letter,  at  the  reception  of  which  I  was  fortunate 


xxi  i  In  troduction . 

enough  to  be  present,  and  so  heard  the  contents  read.  He  has 
written  between  forty  and  fifty  letters  since  he  went  out.  They 
are  really  exquisite  in  their  way.  They  are  evidently  written  as 
fast  as  his  pen  can  go  ;  yet,  if  he  spent  whole  days  about  them 
they  could  not  be  more  beautiful  compositions  than  they  are.” 

And  in  another  letter,  1834  : — 

“Newman’s  pamphlet  on  suffragans  will  be  out  immediately. 
It  is  astonishing  the  speed  with  which  he  composes,  and  that 
when  he  has  a  dozen  other  things  hanging  on  his  mind  at  the 
same  time.  It  is  certainly  a  good  illustration  of  Kose’s  maxim, 

‘  that  those  who  have  most  to  do  are  the  fittest  persons  to 
take  in  hand  any  new  work.’  ” 

A  letter,  July  1833,  records  the  return  home  : — 

“  Newman  has  at  last  returned  from  his  long  travels  ;  he  is 
looking  very  well.  That  he  does  look  well  is  rather  strange,  as  he 
was  very  dangerously  ill  for  a  long  time  in  Sicily.  ...  I  drank 
tea  with  Newman  last  night.  Keble  comes  up  to-morrow  to  preach 
the  assize  sermon.  An  assize  sermon  is  essentially  a  conservative 
one,  so  I  don’t  know  how  he’ll  manage.” 

This  is  the  sermon  recorded  in  the  Apologia ,  where  the 
writer,  after  speaking  of  his  arrival  at  his  mother’s  house, 
concludes  the  chapter — 

“This  was  on  a  Tuesday.  The  following  Sunday,  July  14th, 
Mr.  Keble  preached  the  assize  sermon  in  the  University  pulpit. 
It  was  published  under  the  title  of  ‘  National  Apostasy.’  I  have 
ever  considered  and  kept  that  day  as  the  start  of  the  religious 
movement  of  1833.” 

The  notice  of  the  same  event  in  the  letters  before  us  gives 
the  impression  of  the  time  : — 

“  July  30,  1833. — I  send  you  a  cop}7-  of  Keble’s  assize  sermon, 
preached  a  fortnight  ago.  I’m  sorry  I  did  not  hear  it  myself. 
The  church  at  assize  sermons  is  always  as  full  as  it  can  hold, 
from  people  who  go  not  to  hear  the  sermon,  but  to  see  the  judges’ 
wigs.  And  unfortunately  I  went  rather  late,  not  thinking  but 
that  I  should  find  the  undergraduates  gallery  tolerably  empty  as 
usual  \  but  a  cloud  of  feathery  and  bonneted  female  intruders  had 
occupied  the  whole,  1  am  the  more  sorry  I  did  not  hear  it,  as  I 
cannot  help  thinking  it  a  kind  of  exordium  of  a  great  revolution 

shall  I  call  it  1  coming  on,  whether  rapidly  or  slowly  we  cannot 


Introduction. 


XXlll 


tell,  but  at  any  rate  most  surely.  It  is  tlie  first  regular  remon¬ 
strance  against  the  measures  of  the  infidel  party  here,  the  first 
decided  and  pointed  protest  from  a  minister  of  the  Church  in  his 
proper  and  peculiar  station.  All  the  articles  and  letters  and 
reviews  of  the  British  Magazine  are  very  well  in  their  way,  but 
they  don’t  come  as  from  authority ;  and  though  the  authors  of 
them  are  clergymen,  yet,  when  writing  for  the  public  at  large,  they 
are  no  more  than  laymen  and  private  persons.  This  is  a  solemn 
ecclesiastical  censure.  Different  opinions  have,  of  course,  been 
given  of  it  by  different  people.  Some  of  the  barristers  of  the  Tory 
side  thought  is  too  strong,  especially  as  one  of  the  judges,  Gurney, 
either  was  or  had  been  a  dissenter.  This  is  certainly  carrying  the 
principle  of  politeness  rather  too  far.  If  all  offensive  topics  are  to  be 
avoided  in  a  sermon,  some  people  may  choose  to  think  virtue  and 
sin  invidious  distinctions,  and  certainly  religion  a  most  offensive 
topic.  Pusey  of  Christ  Church,  a  person  of  excellent  principles, 
thinks  some  passages  rather  too  pointed,  from  what  reason  I  don’t 
exactly  know.  It  seems  to  be  as  gentle  as  could  be,  consistent  with 
the  principles  professed  in  it.  The  preface  is  rather  more  piquant, 
especially  the  concluding  sentence.  The  Bill  being  actually  past  the 
second  reading  [the  Bill  for  the  suppression  of  ten  Irish  Bishoprics], I 
suppose  he  felt  himself  more  at  liberty  to  speak  out.  One  thing  is 
naturally  suggested  by  the  advice  toward  the  end  of  the  sermon, 
which,  next  to  those  private  duties  which  belong  to  us  at  all  times, 
makes  the  duty  of  standing  by  the  Church,  and  publicly  supporting 
it,  the  most  important  that  we  have  in  these  days.  There  is 
nothing  like  talking  for  really  forcing  ideas  on  people’s  minds ;  and 
this  sermon  is  something  tangible  to  begin  upon,  and  one  may 
accommodate  one’s-self  exactly  to  the  standard  of  excellence  which 
the  person  one  talks  with  may  have,  and  either  call  it  very  clever,  or 
very  good,  or  very  pious,  or  very  sharp,  or  very  abusive,  just  as 
the  occasion  requires  ;  but  talking  somehow  or  other  is  the  most 
efficacious  means.  People  are  caught  by  mere  words — I  mean  not 
only  silly  people,  but  really  it  is  natural  for  all  to  think  that  of 
importance  which  they  hear  much  of,  and  very  difficult  to  avoid 
thinking  it  right  too.  Froude  is  now  taking,  not  a  walking  but,  a 
talking  tour.” 

The  way  in  which,  what  was  soon  to  be,  a  great  name  is 
here  introduced  will  excite  a  smile  till  it  is  recollected  that 
the  writer  is  an  undergraduate  to  whom  the  name  of  “  Pusey  ” 
was  so  far  little  more  than  a  name.  After  taking  his  degree 
he  spent  some  time  with  other  young  men  reading  divinity 


XXIV 


Introduction. 


under  Dr.  Pusey’s  hospitable  roof,  a  period  of  which  the  letters 
before  us  contain  interesting  memorials.  To  return  to  the  one 
just  quoted  ;  it  reports  how  his  reading,  for  which  he  was 
staying  up  during  the  “  Long,”  was  getting  on  : — 

“  I  am  reading  very  fairly  as  far  as  number  of  hours  go,  though 
I  find  I  get  on  very  slowly.  Newman  has  offered  me  any  assist¬ 
ance  he  can  give,  which  is  very  kind  of  him,  hut  it  would  be  hard 
to  come  down  upon  him  with  all  his  present  engagements  hanging 
upon  him.” 

Almost  immediately  upon  the  assize  sermon  followed  the 
first  numbers  of  the  “  Tracts  for  the  Times.”  Their  authorship, 
their  subject,  their  style,  and  the  various  opinions  expressed  on 
them,  are  discussed  with  critical  intelligence.  On  the  question, 
e.g .,  of  committees,  we  read — 

“  Many  cooks  spoil  the  broth.  People  should  remember  that 
there  is  an  important  question,  which  cannot  but  considerably 
affect  the  usefulness  of  the  most  prudent  and  wisely-balanced  pub¬ 
lication,  i.e.  whether  it  will  be  read  or  not.  A  question  has  been 
raised  whether  all  the  tracts  that  come  out  in  the  Society’s  cause 
ought  not  to  be  the  productions  of  a  committee,  or  at  any  rate 
should  be  submitted  to  their  alteration.  Newman  is  against  the 
thing  on  the  very  obvious  principle  that  intense  stupidity  cannot 
fail  to  be  the  principal  quality  of  publications  sent  out  under  such 
circumstances.” 

He  hears  of  the  success  of  the  tracts  in  being  read  and 
exciting  interest. 

“  I  am  almost  tempted,”  he  writes,  “  to  go  down  and  witness  it 
with  my  own  eyes,  and  leave  my  reading  and  examination  to  fish 
for  itself.  I  am  almost  afraid  to  hint  to  you  how  exceedingly 
slowly  I  get  on  in  the  last-mentioned  matters.  I  only  do  it  to 
prevent  expectation.” 

That  his  mind  was  thus  diverted  from  that  exclusive  atten¬ 
tion  to  the  work  of  reading  necessary  for  high  honours  is  no ' 
matter  of  regret,  since  it  was  being  exercised  in  the  field  more 
congenial  to  his  peculiar  powers;  but  it  is  scarcely  necessary, 


Introduction. 


xxv 


under  the  circumstances  of  the  case,  to  attribute  his  Third  to 
any  singularity  of  mental  constitution  and  late  development  of 
the  intellect. 

One  study  under  any  circumstances  must  have  shared  his 
interests  with  the  application  of  thought  to  a  direct  immediate 
object, — study  of  character.  It  was  an  instinct  with  him  to 
speculate  on  the  character  of  all  with  whom  he  came  in  con¬ 
tact  :  one  that  made  him  feel  the  interest  of  sympathy  with 
the  great  masters  of  fiction.  Hot  that  this  was  apparently 
a  conscious  exercise  with  him,  still  less  a  power  of  which 
he  made  any  display,  but  he  could  not  be  taken  by  sur¬ 
prise.  Whether  it  was  a  public  character,  or  one  with  whom 
he  had  been  brought  into  ever  so  slight  personal  relations, 
he  would  always  be  found  with  some  view  more  distinct 
and  complex  than  is  common  where  observation  has  not 
been  quickened  by  direct  personal  interest — a  view  unfold¬ 
ing  itself  naturally  to  himself,  as  well  as  his  hearers,  as  his 
impressions  put  themselves  into  words.  A  letter  of  sympathy 
naturally  with  him  fell  into  an  analysis  of  character ;  thus  his 
condolence  took  the  form  of  all  others  most  interesting  to  the 
mourner.  Persons  were  surprised  to  find,  in  one  whose 
opportunities  had  been  few  and  not  intimate,  an  estimate  of 
qualities  which  answered  to  their  life-long  experience ;  and 
hidden  graces  detected  which  they  supposed  only  known  to 
the  familiar  home  circle. 

This  habit  of  insight,  of  looking  beyond  the  outside,  of 
judging  men  by  their  qualities  and  characteristics  rather  than 
by  such  manifestations  of  themselves  as  circumstances  had 
a  large  share  in,  was  not  compatible  with  partisanship;  nor 
was  he  by  nature  made  to  be  either  the  follower  or  the 
leader  of  a  party.  It  was  not  possible,  it  was  not  to  be 


XXVI 


Introduction. 


desired,  that  under  the  circumstances  of  his  early  College 

* 

career  he  should  do  otherwise  than  feel  and  act  as  one 
of  a  party.  To  he  brought  into  the  intimate  society  of  men 
intellectually  and  morally  formed  for  influence,  and  gifted  with 
all  the  personal  qualities  which  naturally  engage  affection  and 
reverence,  to  understand  them,  to  realise  the  privilege  of  admis¬ 
sion  to  such  intimacy,  and  to  prefer  it  to  intercourse  with  men  of 
his  own  standing,  necessarily  made  him  feel  one  of  a  school,  and 
enjoy  the  sense  of  alliance  with  it ;  but  it  was  these  peculiar  and 
overmastering  circumstances, — we  may  add  also  the  prevalence 
of  party  spirit  as  a  feature  of  the  times, — rather  than  his  tempera¬ 
ment,  which  brought  it  about.1  The  deepest  thinkers,  the  most 
devoted  men,  the  most  loveable  companions,  felt  strongly  one 
way;  he  threw  himself  into  the  stream  of  their  thought.  And  of 
this  influence  the  earlier  articles  now  republished  bear  some 
trace ;  though  all  are  strongly  marked  by  what  was  lastingly 
characteristic  of  himself.  But  all  the  time  there  was  an  inner 
strain  of  thought,  an  independent  mode  of  viewing  things, 
more  peculiarly  his  own  than  any  teaching  of  a  school.  The 
work  most  characteristic  of  him  was  solitary  work,  to  be 
thought  over  and  dwelt  upon  in  silence ;  and  independent  of 
intercourse  with  even  a  congenial  mind.  Sympathy  indeed 
was  valued  and  gratefully  acknowledged,  but  it  was  not  neces¬ 
sary.  So  soon  as  he  could  not  follow  his  hitherto  leader,  he 
fell  back  on  a  constitutional  bias — on  the  workings  of  a  mind 
that  had  its  inner  court,  testing  questions  by  its  own  laws  of 
investigation.  Thus  thrown  upon  himself,  those  who  knew 

1  On  this  point  a  friend  of  the  author’s  writes :  “  As  to  partisanship,  I 
think  that,  in  the  higher  sense  of  the  word,  he  had  a  great  deal  of  the 
loyalty  and  the  singleness  of  purpose  of  a  partisan  for  a  great  cause.  When 
there  was  any  University  row  going  on,  he  was  the  soul  and  backbone  of 
any  movement  determined  on.  Of  course  this  altered  much  in  late  years.” 


Introduction. 


XXVll 


him  best  saw  how  natural  was  the  modification  of  view  on 
certain  points  which  had  been  regarded  as  distinctive  of  the 
party  to  which  he  had  been  allied  by  so  many  ties.  When  his 
sympathy  went  most  unhesitatingly  with  this  party,  his 
thought,  when  left  to  its  own  working,  slid  naturally  into  a 
channel  more  congenial  to  the  turn  of  his  intellect.  Thus, 
as  an  example  of  his  warm  sympathy  with  the  movement, 
we  give  an  opening  sentence  of  the  following  letter,  dated 
Dec.  5,  1836,  which  however,  it  will  be  seen,  digresses  to 
other  subjects  : — 

“  We  are  getting  stronger  and  stronger  every  day.  What  do 
you  think  of  S.  becoming  an  Apostolical1?1  The  worst  of  it 
is,  that  he  has  been  ‘  other  things  ’  before,  so  one  does  not  know 
how  far  to  think  satisfactorily  of  his  conversion.  Only  it  is  a  sure 
sign  of  a  party  growing  when  it  draws  in  all  sorts  of  people.  As 
things  advance  changes  of  opinion  show  more  for  the  party  and 
less  for  the  individuals.  I  expect  to  see  the  time  when  being  an 
Apostolical  will  not  exempt  a  person  in  the  least  from  being  a  cox¬ 
comb.  Only  think,  when  the  system  finds  its  way  into  the  heart 
of  Cambridge,  when  the  Trinity  Common-room  engrafts  Apostolical 
upon  German  views  !  We  are  destined,  I  think,  to  see  curious 
combinations  as  the  tide  of  affairs  advances.  Miss  G.,  by  the 
way,  has  been  inspired  by  the  idea  of  writing  something  to  aid  the 
cause.  But  this  is  a  secret.  I  hear  H.  is  meditating  something 
of  the  kind.  I  like  the  scheme  very  much,  and  quite  envy  her  the 
work.  Not  that  it  is  at  all  in  my  line,  only  that  one  takes  a  fancy 
to  everything  rather  than  one’s  own  particular  work.  We  shall 
beat  Miss  Martineau  out  and  out.  At  any  rate  we  shall  not  first 
describe  a  beautiful  landscape,  and  forthwith  upon  it  introduce  two 
archbishops  and  an  archdeacon  arguing  on  the  Apostolical  Succes¬ 
sion,  which  is  the  course  she  would  have  pursued.  .  .  .  Pusey  has 
been  laid  up  with  a  cold  lately,  and  unable  to  deliver  his  lectures. 
He  is  giving  a  course  of  lectures  on  Prophecy,  in  which  he  brings 
in  quite  new  views  of  interpretation  from  the  Fathers.  We  are 
not  gone  very  far  as  yet,  being  at  present  on  the  text,  1  The  man  is 
become  as  one  of  us.’  To  me  the  lectures  are  impressive,  not  so 
much  from  the  particular  views  which  they  give,  as  from  the  general 
idea  they  leave  on  the  mind  of  there  being  so  much  more  in  the 
words  of  Scripture  than  one  at  all  thought  of  before.  .  .  .  0. 

1  A  title  of  the  day — happily  short-lived. 


•  •  • 


XXV111 


Introduction. 


lias  come  up  and  gone  down  again.  He  is  really  doing  no  good  at 
all  in  the  way  he  is  going  on  now — posting  up  and  down  the 
country  without  objector  interest.  His  mind  never  settles  to  any¬ 
thing.  There  is  really  something  valuable  in  the  mere  principle  of 
permanence  •  when  a  man  can  fix  himself  in  a  certain  place  for  a 
certain  time ;  which  is  a  kind  of  excellence  that  even  matter  itself 
aspires  to  and  attains  successfully.” 


Naturally  his  letters  told  of  what  was  passing,  and  of  what 
was  interesting  in  the  events  and  doings  around  him  ;  but  his 
conversation  at  the  same  time  was  more  intimately  himself,  and 
showed  a  mind  pursuing  its  own  topics  in  its  own  way,  very 
much  in  the  vein  of  his  later  years.  To  support  this  view  by 
slight  hasty  records  written  by  inexperienced  hands  needs 
apology,  but  contemporary  statements  are  more  to  be  relied  on 
than  most  memories.  The  leaves  of  a  sister’s  note-book  tell  of 
a  home  visit  paid  while  the  same  public  interests  were  occupy¬ 
ing  him  : — 

“  Talked  with  J.  B.  M.  He  is  one  of  the  most  agreeable 
people  to  talk  with  I  know  anywhere  ;  so  much  sincerity, 
clearness  of  head,  good  sense,  good  nature,  and  humour ;  and 
also  some  of  that  deference  for  the  person  talked  with  that 
he  admires  so  much  in  Froude.” 

Again  :  “  Talk  with  J.  B.  M.  His  theory  that  really  great 
men  are  less  guided  by  what  is  called  free-will  than  common 
minds — they  seem  rather  to  follow  an  impulse  beyond  them¬ 
selves.” 

Again  :  “  He  talked  of  Coleridge  and  his  uncandid  use  of 
Jeremy  Taylor  in  the  Aids  to  Reflection.  From  thence  we 
wandered  to  the  old  Greek  philosophers,  especially  Plato.  We 
agreed  that  some  first-rate  men  ought  to  translate  his  and  simi¬ 
lar  works,  that  ladies,  who  have  all  a  little  leaning  towards  the 
elevated  and  abstract,  should  gain  some  glimpse  of  that  world 


Introduction . 


xxix 


so  far  beyond  their  reach.  But  no  doubt  a  translation  would 
destroy  half  the  merit  and  more  than  half  the  charm.” 

Again  :  “  From  poetry  and  some  of  Wordsworth’s  views  of  a 
previous  existence,  went  to  the  art  of  reading  poetry  and  read¬ 
ing  in  general.  Good  and  bad  readers.  Keble  not  a  good  one. 
He  an  exception  to  what  appears  a  general  rule  of  mind 
showing  itself  externally  by  voice,  by  different  tastes  and 
arts,  such  as  music,  etc.  From  Keble  to  Froude  :  the  pecu¬ 
liarity  of  his  mind — his  power  of  grappling  with  an  idea, 
a  single  naked  idea.  Whether  ideas  can  exist  in  the  mind 
neither  expressed  by  words  nor  pictures  ;  agreed  that  they  could, 
hence  such  words  of  the  poets  as  ‘  brooding,’  ‘  glimpses,’ 

‘  consciousness,’  etc.  etc.  A  passage  from  Froude’s  diary  [not 
then  published]  where  he  describes  his  inability  to  enter  into 
the  meaning  of  the  Psalm  he  was  reading,  in  spite  of  the  most 
intense  effort,  till  Merton  bell  sounded,  when  the  whole  full 
meaning  broke  in  upon  him.  From  Froude  to  Coleridge,  his 
notion  of  belief  as  an  effort  of  the  mind  and  the  will,  his 
apparent  want  of  apprehension  of  a  simple  and  intuitive 
faith.” 

Again  :  “  Mr.  S.  called  in  the  evening  for  Butler’s  Analogy, 
J.  B.  M.  having  had  an  argumentative  walk  with  him  in  the 
afternoon,  At  night  had  a  long  abstruse  conversation  about 
Butler’s  views,  and  Hume’s,  and  men  of  science.” 

Then  follows  a  criticism.  A  caller  had  given  opportunity 
for  lively  controversy,  and  he  had  disappointed  expectation 
and  said  very  little,  not  having  apparently  the  same  faith  in 
disputation  at  three-and-twenty  as  he  had  shown  at  fifteen. 
One  question  here  touched  upon,  how  ideas  may  exist  in  the 
mind,  was  one  which  bears  very  closely  on  his  own  habits  of 
thought,  which  to  those  who  had  opportunity  of  observation 


XXX 


Introduction. 


answered  exactly  to  this  word  “  brooding,” — a  quiet  waiting,  an 
extraordinary  patience  and  stillness  of  expectation.  With 
no  personal  allusion  this  state  is  eloquently  described  in  the 
conclusion  of  the  “  Augustinian  Doctrine”  as  that  of  great 
analytical  minds  : — 

“  The  natural  activity  of  the  human  mind,  so  opposed  to  the 
passive  attitude  ordinarily,  puts  up  with  it  at  certain  intervals  for 
the  sake  of  rest,  and  enjoys  it.  But  difficulty  with  passiveness  is 
uncongenial.  We  want  always,  when  we  are  at  work,  to  feel  our¬ 
selves  in  progress,  in  action,  advancing  step  after  step ;  and  the 
attitude  of  standing  still  in  thought,  though  it  be  for  an  important 
result,  though  it  be  consciously  only  a  waiting  in  readiness  to 
catch  some  idea  when  it  may  turn  up,  is,  for  the  time  that  it  is 
such  a  waiting,  and  previous  to  its  reward,  a  painful  void  and  hol¬ 
lowness  of  the  mind.  But  such  is  the  attitude  which  is  required  for 
true  analytical  thought,  or  the  mind’s  examination  of  itself.  For 
the  ideas  which  are  the  contents  of  that  inward  world,  wandering 
in  and  out  of  darkness,  emerging  for  an  instant  and  then  lost  again, 
and  carried  about  to  and  fro  in  the  vast  obscure,  are  too  subtle 
and  elusive  to  be  subject-matter  of  regular  and  active  pursuit ;  but 
must  be  waited  and  watched  for,  with  strength  suspended  and  sus¬ 
tained  in  readiness  to  catch  and  fasten  on  them  when  they  come 
within  reach,  but  the  exertion  being  that  of  suspended  and  sus¬ 
tained  rather  than  of  active  and  employed  strength.” — (. Augustinian 
Doctrine  of  Predestination,  p.  316.) 

After  the  death  of  Froude,  his  time  was  much  occupied  in 
editing  and  arranging  the  Becket  papers,  which  form  volume 
ii.  of  the  second  part  of  Froude’s  ^Remains,  left  in  an  unfinished 
state  by  their  author  :  the  greater  part  of  the  large  letter  being 
his  own.  His  first  original  paper  appeared  in  the  British  Critic 
of  October  1838,  “  Palgrave’s  Truths  and  Fictions  of  the  Middle 
Ages.”  It  tells  no  little  for  the  glare  of  notice  and  criticism 
under  which  the  party  wrote,  that  this  first  effort  should  be 
commented  upon  in  the  University  pulpit,  as  the  following 
letter  (Nov.  5,  1838)  tells  : — 

“  What  do  you  think  of  my  article  having  been  alluded  to  in  a 


Introduction. 


xxxi 


sort  of  way  from  the  University  pulpit  %  It  is  absurd  enough,  but 
so  it  is ;  only  very  slightly,  but  enough  to  recognise  the  allusion. 
Mr.  Gresley  (the  author  of  a  book  on  Preaching)  stuck  up  for  the 
phrase  ‘  ready-made  apparatus ’  [Dr.  Chalmers  had  spoken  of  the 
Church  of  England’s  ready-made  apparatus  of  churches  and 
parishes],  as  though  it  had  been  too  hardly  handled.  We  ought 
to  unite,  he  said,  the  lofty  and  the  practical  parts  of  our  system.  I 
quite  agree  with  him,  but  Dr.  Chalmers  separated  them,  and  that 
in  the  broadest  and  coarsest  way.  R.,  who  was  behind  me,  de¬ 
clared  he  just  saw  the  tips  of  ears  turning  red.  I  confess  to  a 
temporary  suffusion,  but  it  was  only  for  a  moment.  There  were 
not  half  a  dozen  persons  in  church  who  knew  either  the  article 
itself,  or  that  I  had  written  it,  so  I  might  have  spared  myself  even 
that  piece  of  consciousness.” 

We  cannot  quote  the  concluding  word  without  observing 
on  the  singular  absence  of  self-consciousness  as  a  characteristic. 
Writing  home,  where  every  detail  would  have  been  read  with 
interest  and  indulgence,  there  is  scarcely  another  example  of 
such  personal  allusion. 

Erom  this  time  his  pen  was  never  idle.  The  list  of  writ¬ 
ings  at  the  end  of  these  volumes  is  a  chronological  record  of 
the  nature  of  his  studies,  the  bent  of  his  mind,  and  his  course 
of  thought.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  articles  selected  do 
not  do  justice  to  his  extensive  'knowledge  of  our  great  theo¬ 
logians.  One  interesting  article  in  the  British  Critic  (October 
1842),  on  the  Development  of  the  Church  in  the  Seventeenth 
Century,  with  its  comprehensive  and  telling  extracts  from  the 
divines  of  that  period,  was  felt,  from  the  very  length  and 
number  of  these  extracts,  to  be  unsuited  for  reproduction 
among  the  author’s  own  proper  work.  It  was  to  provide  an 
organ  and  support  to  the  Anglican  party  in  the  Church,  when 
the  British  Critic  came  to  an  end,  that  he  became  joint- editor 
of  the  Christian  Remembrancer ,  in  which  appeared  so  many  of 
the  papers  reprinted  in  these  volumes. 

We  can  hardly  believe  of  a  character  so  full  of  life,  so  keenly 


XXX11 


Introduction . 


interested  in  men  and  things,  that  it  was  without  ambition — 
which  often  exists  as  a  latent  quality  where  all  action  seems  to 
work  in  distinct  contradiction  to  it — but  with  him  it  was  held 
in  check  by  counterbalancing  impressions.  The  pen  was  in 
his  case  the  only  natural  instrument  by  which  to  make  him¬ 
self  widely  known.  The  mere  want  of  power  of  voice  for  in¬ 
tercourse  with  numbers,  the  hopelessness  of  securing  in  large 
social  gatherings  that  fair  field  for  the  expression  of  thought 
which  a  searching  quality  of  tone,  and  volume  of  sound  give, 
drove  him  to  the  domestic  circle,  the  tete-a-tete,  the  privacy  of 
his  study,  for  saying  what  he  had  to  say.1  But  also  that  com¬ 
mon  form  of  ambition,  a  craving  for  influence,  did  not  weigh 
much  with  him  ;  he  was  not  impelled  by  the  necessity  of  in¬ 
doctrinating  others  with  his  views.  In  an  early  article  on  Dr. 
Arnold  (1844)  he  contrasts  two  classes  of  mind  in  this 
respect : — 

“  There  is  a  great  difference  between  first-class  minds,”  he 
writes,  “  on  this  point.  Some  have  no  natural  taste  or  liking  for 
the  particular  office  of  influencing  minds.  Their  hearts  and  in¬ 
tellects  expand  within  themselves,  spread  over  the  earth,  sea,  and 
air  of  speculation,  and  pervade  all  metaphysical  nature,  before  they 
definitely  take  up  the  notion  of  impressing  their  views  on  any  one 
being  but  themselves.  The  pleasure  of  getting  their  views  received, 
seeing  them  take,  and  watching  their  entrance  into  other  minds,  is 
one  which  they  do  not  feel  or  appreciate.  It  is  just  the  reverse 
with  another  class  :  with  them  the  very  process  of  expansion  in 
their  own  minds  takes  the  form  of  communication  with  other 
minds,  and  they  have  no  sooner  a  view  at  all  than  they  want  to 
see  it  out  and  abroad  and  doing  its  work.  The  very  life  of  an 
opinion,  even  an  inward  one,  is  connected  in  their  idea  with  an 
external  power,  and  the  internal  and  the  external  go  on  together.” 

1  Many  can  bear  witness  to  bis  felicitous  powers  of  talk  under  favouring 
conditions.  Thus  a  friend  writes  :  “  Of  the  brightness,  the  wit,  the  conver¬ 
sational  power,  throwing  himself  into  the  minds  of  those  he  was  speaking 
with,  too  much  cannot  be  said.  We  spent  one  winter  in  Brighton,  and  he 
used  to  walk  over  from  Shoreham,  and  he  and  my  husband  talked  together 
as  no  other  two  men  could  do.” — See  In  Memoriam ,  vol.  ii. 


•  •  • 


Introduction. 


xxxm 


It  is  easy  here  to  see  with  which  class  the  writers  own 
feelings  sympathise.  The  task  of  refuting  what  he  believed  to 
be  error  in  an  encounter  with  one  mind  in  stiff  argument,  was 
a  greater  stimulus  to  him  than  the  hope  of  carrying  numbers 
along  with  him. 

If  there  was  ambition  it  was  of  a  higher  flight  than  the 
quality  that  deliberately  works  towards  its  ends.  He  wrote 
in  hopes  of  accomplishing  a  public  purpose,  but  the  mere 
pleasure  of  seeing  and  feeling  himself  the  instrument  of  effect¬ 
ing  that  purpose  did  not  influence  him.  Nothing  would  have 
made  him  choose  a  popular  theme  because  it  was  popular. 
Readers  of  the  Augustinian  Doctrine  of  Predestination  must 
perceive  what  a  mine  of  his  most  characteristic  thought  the 
volume  is ;  it  was  clearly  written  under  the  impulse  of  a  strongly 
felt  line  of  argument.  “  I  have  been  dragging  on,”  he  writes 
to  a  friend,  “  through  my  opus  since  I  last  wrote,  and  now 
it  is,  I  am  glad  to  say,  near  a  conclusion.  The  book,  I 
confess,  is  not  what  would  popularly  be  called  interesting, 
but  if  it  establishes  a  point  I  shall  be  quite  satisfied.”  He 
had  a  view  to  put  forward,  whether  it  was  popular  or  the 
reverse.  Much  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  Review  of  the 
Baptisynal  Controversy.  His  aim  was,  indeed,  to  reconcile  two 
parties  in  the  Church  into  a  mutual  toleration  of  each  other 
within  her  pale,  which  implies  a  certain  desire  to  meet  the 
reader’s  prejudices  and  smooth  difficulties  ;  but  the  number  of 
his  readers  was  not  a  question  either  in  setting  out  on  his  task 
or  in  carrying  it  through.  A  letter  acknowledging  a  presenta¬ 
tion  copy  has  come  to  light,  which  probably  reflects  the  state  of 
mind  of  the  reading  public  of  the  day,  while  it  does  justice 
to  the  earnestness  of  the  author  : — 

“  Thank  you  much  for  the  volume  which  the  post  brings  me 

M.E.-I.]  c 


XXXIV 


Introduction . 


this  morning.  I  am  glad  that  you  assume  me  to  take  interest 
in  such  questions,  and  I  assure  you  this  one  is  still  in  the  list  of 
subjects  which  I  think  I  could  retire  upon  when  bidding  adieu  to 
the  world.  I  am  not,  however,  capable  of  either  long  or  close 
attention  to  any  such  subject.  All  I  can  do  will  be  to  dip  into 
the  volume  as  a  swallow  dips  into  a  pool.  It  is  of  no  use  what¬ 
ever,  I  know,  trying  to  change  the  current  of  a  full  and  eager 
mind  when  it  is  once  on  a  theme ;  but  I  am  sorry  for  your  sake 
that  this  is  not  one  of  the  subjects  of  the  day.  No  doubt  there 
are  good  people  who  earnestly  desire  to  have  their  minds  cleared 
on  this  point,  whether  there  be  a  controversy  about  it  or  not ;  but 
they  are  as  few  as  they  that  served  God  in  the  days  of  Elijah.” 

It  must  be  noted  of  him  that  he  was  exceedingly  jealous  of 
himself  on  the  score  of  originality.  Most  men  either  take  for 
granted  this  quality  in  themselves,  or  do  not  inquire  into  the 
question  ;  but  it  was  a  point  on  which  he  was  from  the  first 
keenly  watchful.  After  his  ordination  for  Deacon’s  orders  in 
1838,  he  writes  of  his  two  first  sermons : — 

“  One  has  accustomed  one’s-self  to  a  certain  style  of  thought  and 
mode  of  looking  at  things  so  long  that  one  really  cannot  get  out  of 
it,  and  to  write  a  good  plain  homely  sermon  \i.e.  one  intelligible  to 
a  village  congregation]  would  be  a  most  unnatural  exercise  for  me. 
I  confess  I  imitate  Newman,  not  purposely,  but  I  cannot  help  it. 
I  am  not  ambitious  of  being  ranked  among  the  servile  cattle 
(servum  pecas  imitatorum),  but  one  must  follow  in  the  track  which 
has  been  laid  down  for  one.  So  just  as  young  Evangelicals  preach 
evangelically,  though  they  hardly  know  their  own  system  more  than 
they  do  any  other,  so  I  forsooth  must  preach  in  Newman’s  way  with 
the  same  relation  to  him  that  the  Oxford  Newdigate  has  to  Pope.” 

The  habit  of  writing  soon  made  him  feel  his  own  master,  but 
still  his  self-criticism  was  keen.  What  was  written  for  an 
occasion  he  did  not  expect  to  last  beyond  the  occasion.  He 
was  advised  more  than  once  by  friends  to  republish  certain 
articles  of  lasting  interest — as  is  being  done  now, — but  the  idea 
did  not  attract  him,  and  the  request  of  a  publisher  to  undertake 
the  work  was  declined,  seemingly  as  a  matter  of  course.  Even 
in  the  case  of  the  University  Sermons,  which  have  since  received 


Introduction. 


xxxv 


so  warm  a  welcome  ;  though  pressed  from  time  to  time  by  those 
who  knew  their  value  to  collect  them  into  a  volume,  whether 
from  that  easiness  and  absence  of  hurry  which  characterised  him 
in  transactions  of  the  sort,  or  perhaps  expecting  to  add  to  their 
number,  he  put  the  question  aside.  Unprompted,  it  was  one 
of  his  first  acts,  after  realising  the  nature  of  his  illness,  to 
put  them  in  train  for  publication. 

But  though  the  thought  of  name  and  credit  were  never  strong 
impulses  towards  action,  his  pen  was  from  the  first  an  active 
and  telling  instrument  in  all  the  stirring  times  that  succeeded 
the  period  (1834)  of  his  degree  ;  his  whole  interest  and  energies 
were  engrossed  by  his  share  in  them,  and  he  soon  became  a 
recognised  influence.  Under  the  great  shock  of  1845  his  hold  on 
his  own  line  of  thought  never  relaxed,  it  kept  him  still  in  his 
place,  a  support  to  those  who  wavered  or  saw  others  waver. 
And  even  when,  later  on,  lie  seemed  to  stand  aloof  from  the  line 
of  his  friends  and  party,  we  may  observe  a  fixed  reliance  on  the 
original  stand-point,  the  first  principles  which  directed  his 
earliest  conscious  acts  of  thought  and  reflection.  It  was  part 
of  the  nature  here  attributed  to  him  that  the  Church  of  his 
childhood  should  maintain  a  lasting  hold  on  his  obedience. 
His  sympathies  were  all  with  the  theory  which  claimed  for  her 
a  high  origin,  which  connected  her  with  antiquity,  and  traced 
her  formularies  to  a  far-off  ancestry.  Everything  that  could 
subserve  her  weight,  dignity,  and  catholicity  were  congenial  to 
him,  but  he  had  never  any  temptation,  on  the  ground  of  louder 
pretensions  to  these  distinctions,  to  transfer  his  allegiance  to 
another  communion.  It  was  never  for  one  moment  a  question 
with  him.  However  deep  his  early-formed  reverence  for  the 
leader  of  the  movement,  and  unbounded  his  recognition  of  his 
intellectual  power,  his  natural  independence  of  judgment, 


XXXVI 


Introduction . 


indeed  the  very  make  of  his  mind,  held  him  where  he  was. 
Late  in  his  life  he  speculated  on  the  controversial  temper  with 
an  evident  though  unacknowledged  sense  of  experience.  He 
did  not  appear  to  estimate  it  over  highly,  further  than  as  he 
considered  it  now  to  he  rare.  The  contrary  temperament  was 
dealt  with  tenderly — the  one  that  really  needs  the  agreement 
of  those  around  it,  that  has  a  sense  of  discomfort  and  privation 
without  it,  that  must  act  with  others  ;  hut  the  true  con¬ 
troversial  spirit,  that  which,  strong  in  the  feeling  of  possession, 
of  a  firm  hold  of  its  own  view,  rises  with  opposition  or  neglect, 
which  can  stand  alone,  ready  as  it  were  for  all  comers,  this 
was  the  temper  that,  as  he  defined  it,  his  nature  evidently 
responded  to. 

At  the  time  when  his  hopes  and  spirits  were  lowest  these 
qualities  asserted  themselves  with  the  force  of  a  revelation  of 
himself  to  himself.  In  a  letter  (November  1844)  he  writes  : — 

“  Things  look  dark  and  dreary  just  now;  there  is  a  general  set 
upon  us  from  all  quarters,  Conservative  and  Eadical.  The  press 
never  was  so  malignant.” 

But  at  the  end  he  writes  : — 

“For  my  own  part,  I  feel  that  to  he  giving  way  to  melancholy 
or  disgust  at  the  present  state  of  things  would  he  giving  myself 
airs.  I  have  no  right  to  do  it.  Moreover,  all  movements  have 
their  dark  times,  and  this  may  he  one  of  them.  With  respect  to 
J.  H.  N.,  all  I  know  about  him  is  that  he  has  been  regularly  down 
about  things  for  the  last  year  or  two,  and  that  he  has  expressed 
doubts  about  the  catholicity  of  the  English  Church.  I  don’t  know 
any  more  about  it.  He  is  hardly  ever  in  Oxford  now.” 

Such  private  notices  give  an  added  weight  of  sincerity  to  his 
public  expressions  in  the  same  key.  In  an  article  in  the 
Christian  Remembrancer,  April  1845 — “  Eecent  Proceedings  at 
Oxford,”  on  the  sudden  uncalled-for  revival  of  the  attack  on 
Number  90 — we  read  : — 


Introduction. 


xxxvii 


“  We  have  only  to  do  with  the  fact  we  are  speaking  of,  that  Mr. 
Newman  yielded  to  the  cry  against  him,  and  that  the  University 
has  lost  him  ever  since.  Of  this  retirement  and  of  this  seclusion 
those  may  complain  perhaps  who  felt  the  sweetness  of  his  presence  ; 
those  who  saw  and  heard  him,  who  enjoyed  his  teaching,  had  his 
model  before  them,  and  identified  Oxford  with  him.  Those  may 
complain  of  his  retirement.  It  is  a  loss  and  pain  to  them  ;  and  one 
for  which  they  are  inclined  to  accuse  even  him  who  makes  the  loss ; 
who  first  gave  a  stay  and  then  took  it  away  when  habit  had  adopted 
and  appropriated  it.  They  may  complain,  but  not  those  who  sent 
him  away,  who  did  not  like  his  voice  to  be  heard,  and  thought  his 
simple  presence  an  evil.  He  has  done  their  bidding,  and  they  should 
have  been  content.  The  grief  has  fallen  upon  others,  who  feel  a 
vacuum  that  can  hardly  be  filled  up  again,  and  are  deprived  of  a 
support  and  source  of  strength  which  had  worked  itself  into  their 
very  minds.  They  have  now  to  go  on  and  give  the  Church  those 
services  and  labours  with  resoluteness  more  than  cheerfulness,  and 
which  strength  of  spirit  more  than  animation  inspires.  Never 
mind  !  The  task  of  acting  for  themselves  they  must  not  evade 
because  it  is  unpleasant.  It  is  the  very  trial  which  they  are  called 
on  to  undergo.  The  course  of  a  religious  movement  was  never 
meant  by  Providence  to  be  one  overflowing  with  consolations  and 
helps.  Those  who  have  been  in  it  with  those  helps  must  adhere 
to  it  without,  and  face  the  hard  as  well  as  the  smiling  aspects  of 
the  country.  Let  it  be  a  call  to  greater  self-sacrifices,  more  entire 
disinterestedness  and  stricter  devotion  ;  to  an  abandonment  of 
every  private  object  and  fragment  of  feeling  that  is  not  in  the 
one  stern  ecclesiastical  channel,  and  to  a  literal  spread  and  diffusion 
of  the  heart  over  the  Church  which  they  would  preserve.” 

Such  vows  commit  a  man  to  more  than  he  foresees  or  can 
foresee,  till  the  occasion  tests  his  sincerity ;  and  the  needs  of  con¬ 
troversy  show  him  how  few  there  are, — how  often  one  only  out  of 
however  large  a  seeming  choice, — to  do  a  painful  and  difficult 
task  that  has  to  be  done.  In  his  early  manhood  we  have  seen 
him  resisting  melancholy  as  “  a  giving  himself  airs  ;  ”  but  after 
his  illness,  taking  a  drive  towards  Littlemore,  which  his  com¬ 
panion  was  regarding  as  an  object  of  interest,  he  said,  It  was 
all  very  well  for  light-hearted  people  to  look  at  the  place  as 
full  of  interesting  associations  ;  to  him  it  only  represented  a 


xxxviii  Introduction . 

dreary  chasm,  a  period  of  gloom  and  melancholy  from  which 
his  memory  evidently  shrank. 

Little  has  been  said  here  of  his  University  course.  The 
letter  from  his  brother  already  quoted  contains  the  following 
brief  summary  of  it : — “  He  was  admitted  (October  1830)  into 
Oriel  College,  where  he  made  many  life  friendships.  Shortly 
after  taking  his  degree  he  obtained  the  Chancellor’s  prize  for 
an  English  essay  on  'The  Influence  of  Ancient  Oracles  on 
Public  and  Private  Life/  which  I  have  always  thought  a  very 
mature  work  for  a  youth  of  twenty- one,  and  certainly  very 
interesting.  My  brother  resided  at  Oxford  for  some  years, 
studying  under  the  direction  of  Dr.  Pusey  and  Mr.  J.  H.  New¬ 
man,  doing  some  hard  work  in  translation  and  compilation,  and 
showing  from  the  first  much  independence  of  judgment.  He 
tried  for  a  Eellowship  of  Oriel,  and  was  not  elected  ;  I  can  only 
suppose  because  I  was  Fellow,  and  there  was  a  reasonable  ob¬ 
jection  to  brothers  in  a  small  community,  of  which  only  a  third 
or  a  quarter  might  be  resident.”  He  was  elected  Fellow  of 
Magdalen  in  1840,  where  he  resided  till  1856,  when,  on  his 
marriage,  he  accepted  the  living  of  Old  Shoreham.  On  Mr. 
Gladstone’s  recommendation,  and  by  his  first  act  of  patronage, 
he  was  presented  to  a  canonry  of  Worcester  in  1869.  Two 
years  after,  in  1871,  on  the  same  recommendation,  he  was  made 
Eegius  Professor  of  Divinity?,  when,  by  the  operation  of  the 
Act  separating  the  living  of  Ewelme  from  the  Chair  of  Divinity, 
he  was  enabled  to  retain  the  living  of  Old  Shoreham.” 

It  has  not  been  possible  to  hold  strictly  to  the  intention 
with  which  these  preliminary  pages  started,  of  confining  notices 
and  records  of  the  author  to  the  period  when  he  was  little 
known  beyond  those  connected  with  him  by  the  ties  of  home 
and  the  natural  intimacies  of  his  education  and  training.  In 

O 


Introduction. 


XXXIX 


looking  back  upon  a  life,  the  beginning  and  the  end  are  seen  in 
too  close  relation  to  allow  of  such  distinct  treatment ;  but  such 
was  the  intention.  It  was  felt  that  boyhood  and  youth  throw 
a  light  upon  the  thought  and  the  work  of  manhood,  and  that 
in  this  case  his  early  powers  were  in  marked  promise  of  their 
later  development.  Those  who  knew  him  early  are  grateful 
beyond  others  for  the  just,  keen,  and  most  tender  appreciation 
shown  in  the  following  remarkable  estimate  of  character,  as 
seen  from  another  point  of  view.  To  this  paper  it  has  been 
permitted  to  give  a  greater  permanence  than  the  medium  of  its 
first  publication  could  insure.  Such  a  memorial,  in  itself,  and 
apart  from  its  testimony,  is  felt  to  be  a  praise  and  an  honour. 


Dr.  Mozley,  the  Eegius  Professor  of  Divinity  at  Oxford, 
died  last  Friday  (January  4,  1878),  at  his  living  of  Old  Shore- 
ham.  He  had  been  ill  for  more  than  two  years  :  one  of  those 
terrible  blows  which  so  often  fall  on  men  who  have  devoted 
themselves  to  hard  work  and  severe  thought  incapacitated  him 
for  the  labour  of  which  his  previous  life  had  been  full.  He 
rallied  from  it  so  as  to  enter  into  all  his  former  interests.  His 
great  gift  of  equableness  of  mind  and  calmness  of  temper  pre¬ 
vented  the  disturbance  which  so  great  a  shock  to  the  course  of 
life  might  have  given  to  many.  He  hoped  for  some  restoration 
of  strength  and  power,  though  it  might  be  long  in  coming. 
Condemned  to  an  invalid’s  caution  and  quiet,  he  yet  to  a 
certain  degree  turned  his  thoughts  to  his  natural  pursuits,  and 
his  days  passed  tranquilly  and  happily.  He  even  brought 
himself  to  give  his  ordinary  course  of  lectures  in  the  October 
term  of  1876.  But  the  effort  was  too  much,  and  probably  told 
hurtfully  on  him.  At  any  rate,  after  that,  improvement  flagged, 


xl  Introduction. 

and  when  he  left  Oxford  after  the  term  he  never  returned  to  it. 
All  through  last  year,  in  spite  of  a  rally  in  the  summer  at 
Malvern,  strength  was  sinking.  Still  there  was  little  distress. 
He  enjoyed,  as  he  had  always  done,  the  presence  and  conversa¬ 
tion  of  his  friends.  He  looked  forward  to  Christmas  with  an 
eagerness  which  now  seems  to  have  had  meaning.  He  had  the 
undisturbed  happiness  of  the  Christmas  festival.  There  was 
no  reason  for  expecting  any  sudden  change.  But  two  days 
afterwards  the  blow  fell  again.  A  few  days  of  apparent  un¬ 
consciousness  followed,  and  then  he  passed  away,  peacefully 
and  without  suffering. 

We  have  lost  in  him,  in  the  very  ripeness  and  fulness  of 
his  powers,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  thinkers  and  writers  of 
our  time.  What  was  remarkable  in  him  was  the  ultimate 
triumph,  the  clear,  admitted  triumph,  of  the  real  genius  and 
power  that  was  in  him,  over  the  comparatively  slow  growth  of 
the  subsidiary  and  secondary  faculties  on  which  every  writer 
must  depend  for  the  ability  to  develop  his  ideas  and  to  say 
what  he  would.  The  world  of  readers,  certainly  some  of  its 
most  competent  representatives,  were  fairly  taken  by  surprise 
by  the  volume  of  University  sermons  carried  through  the  press 
since  his  illness  began,  by  the  affectionate  care  of  a  near  rela¬ 
tive.  We  found  that  we  had  among  us  a  man  who  could 
handle  deep  moral  and  religious  themes  with  the  steady  eye 
and  large  grasp  of  Butler,  and  with  a  richness  of  imaginative 
illustration  to  which  Butler  can  lay  no  claim.  Those  sermons 
were  the  natural  unforced  fruit  of  a  mental  self-discipline  of 
more  than  forty  years,  as  resolute,  as  undismayed  by  difficulty, 
as  unintermitting,  as  was  ever  exercised  by  a  man  who  was 
determined  to  make  full  }3roof  of  the  talents  committed  to  him. 
Those  who  are  able  to  carry  their  knowledge  of  him  so  far  back 


Introduction. 


xli 


as  forty  years  ago,  can  remember  then  the  continual  contrast 
between  the  originality,  the  solidity,  the  reach  of  his  thought, 
the  strong,  bold  snatches  at  unperceived  truth  that  marked 
him,  the  obstinate  pertinacity  with  which  he  struggled  to  get 
at  the  core  of  a  subject,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  way  in 
which  his  thoughts  often  baffled  both  his  tongue  and  his  pen, 
the  imperfect,  unsatisfying,  ill- proportioned  expression  of  what 
he  wanted  to  say,  his  unappeasable  fastidiousness  about  the 
words  or  the  structure  which  he  required,  and  for  which  no 
ordinary  allowance  of  time  was  sufficient.  He,  like  other  re¬ 
markable  men  of  the  same  time,  took  but  low  honours  in  the 
Oxford  schools.  The  story  goes  that  in  the  examination  for 
the  Oriel  Fellowship  he  produced  for  an  essay  a  fragment  of  a 
dozen  lines,  but  a  dozen  lines  which  no  other  man  in  the 
examination  could  have  written.  Never  did  any  man  start 
with  a  less  promising  outfit  of  fluency  and  facility  of  language, 
or  of  the  power  of  readily  disentangling  and  ordering  his 
thoughts.  But  he  knew  that  he  had  much  to  say,  and  those 
who  knew  him  best,  and  they  were  capable  judges,  fully  recog¬ 
nised  it  too.  No  man  was  ever  less  daunted  by  difficulties 
either  in  himself  or  in  things.  No  man  was  ever  more  calm 
and  patient  in  waiting  for  the  time  of  ripening  and  strength. 
No  man  less  spared  trouble,  or  acknowledged  more  uncom¬ 
plainingly  the  necessity  of  toil  which  made  no  show.  No  man 
cared  so  much  about  a  perpetual  and  severe  self-education,  or 
cared  so  little  about  all  the  hard  and  heavy  wrork  which  he  did 
in  secret  being  in  any  w7ay  apparent  except  in  its  indirect 
results  on  his  own  mind.  Oxford  was  unusually  brilliant  in 
his  undergraduate  and  bachelor  days,  and  among  these  brilliant 
contemporaries  he  made  no  figure,  and  was  lost.  Outsiders 
knew  not  what  a  fire  of  energy,  resolution,  and  poetic  enthu- 


xlii 


Introduction. 


siasm  burned  under  that  mask  of  unready  speech  and  imper¬ 
turbable  calmness.  Some  of  those  even  who  began  to  find  out 
that  he  could  write  still  doubted  his  power  of  clear  and  steady 
thinking.  His  mind  was  one  which  needed  time.  But  with 
time,  and  the  diligent,  conscientious,  untiring  self-training  and 
self-correction,  in  which  he  never  relaxed  to  the  last,  came  the 
growth  and  the  surprises  of  an  expanding  intellect,  which  went 
on  proving  itself  singularly  rich,  versatile,  subtle,  strong.  With 
time  came  eloquence,  popular  writing,  hard  argument,  original 
learning.  His  literary  career  began  with  a  vigorous  Oxford 
prize  essay  on  the  Ancient  Oracles,  in  which  was  curiously 
shadowed  forth  his  characteristic  position  afterwards  towards 
questions  relating  to  the  evidence  and  theory  of  religion,  which 
had  not  then  assumed  the  gravity  and  practical  importance 
belonging  to  them  in  later  years.  It  was  the  beginning  of  a 
career  in  which  brain  and  pen  were  never  idle,  and  never 
flagged,  till  mortal  illness  stopped  their  exercise.  And  what 
brain  and  pen  had  grown  to,  through  that  long  course  of  most 
diversified  employment  in  the  service  of  religion,  is  finally 
visible,  as  we  have  said,  in  those  works  to  which  he  had  hardly 
the  time  to  give  the  finishing  touches,  before  the  noble  and 
matured  intellect  which  they  revealed  was  released  from  its 
earthly  task-work. 

His  early  occupation  was  almost  entirely  in  the  periodical 
literature  of  the  Church  movement  with  which  he  was  so  closely 
connected.  He  was  the  intimate  friend  of  most  of  its  chiefs ; 
and  when,  after  lie  had  missed  a  Fellowship  at  his  own  College, 
Oriel,  Dr.  Bouth,  the  President  of  Magdalen,  with  his  keen  eye 
for  real  ability,  brought  him  to  Magdalen,  he  settled  down  at 
Oxford,  to  turn  the  leisure  of  his  Fellowship  to  full  account. 
The  British  Critic  was  then  at  the  height  of  its  vigour  and 


Introduction. 


xliii 


brilliancy  :  lie  naturally  found  a  place  among  its  writers  ;  in 
the  company  of  those  ardent  and  powerful  minds  which  made 
it  the  expression  of  their  ideas  and  hopes,  his  own  took  fire  ; 
and  an  article  of  singular  eloquence  and  pathos  on  Lord  Strafford 
(April  1843),  revealed  both  its  richness  and  daring.  He  had 
lighted  on  work  to  which  his  gifts  were  adapted  ;  and  he  applied 
himself  to  it,  not  as  a  pastime  or  occasional  effort,  but  with  the 
conscientious  seriousness  of  one  who  has  an  aim  and  purpose 
in  what  he  does.  When  the  British  Critic  fell  in  the  great 
crash  of  the  party  of  which  it  was  the  organ,  he  at  once  looked 
out  for  something  to  supply  its  place  for  that  Anglican  section 
of  the  party  which  refused  to  give  up  faith  in  the  Catholic 
character  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  hope  for  its  future. 
Calm,  intrepid,  patient,  independent,  combining  in  a  remarkable 
degree  deep  and  loyal  affection  with  a  jealous  assertion  of  his 
own  rights  of  judgment  and  confidence  in  his  own  strong 
common  sense,  he  was  less  moved  than  most  of  his  friends  by 
the  reverses  and  disasters  of  those  days.  In  conjunction  with 
the  late  Mr.  W.  Scott  of  Hoxton  he  set  up  the  new  form  of  the 
Christian  Remembrancer  ;  for  ten  years  he  threw  his  whole  force 
into  it ;  and  his  articles,  such  as  those  on  Laud,  Luther,  and 
the  Book  of  Job,  showed  alike  his  versatility  and  command  of 
resources  and  the  increasing  depth  and  power  of  his  thought. 
He  was  one  of  those  who  in  anxious  days  had  most  to  do  with 
founding  the  Guardian ,  and  to  his  co-operation  and  indefati¬ 
gable  assistance  much  of  its  early  success  was  due.  But  all  the 
while  he  was  leading  a  student’s  life  at  Oxford.  He  was  a 
reader,  and  a  reader  with  a  purpose.  He  had  perhaps  an  equal 
dislike  for  mere  showiness — for  looseness  of  thought  and  for  a 
slovenly,  and,  to  use  his  own  common  expression,  dauby  style 
of  writing;  and  for  mere  erudition  without  an  object,  pointless 


xliv 


Introduction. 


and  unable  to  make  itself  of  use.  He  was  impatient  amid  the 
loud  words  and  strong  assertions  of  controversy,  that  “  people 
would  not  think.”  His  repeated  criticism  on  imposing  and 
popular  theories  was  that  their  arguments  disclosed  a  want  of 
previous  “  underground  work.”  And  by  unstinted  “  underground 
work  ”  he  prepared  himself  for  any  important  task — by  hard, 
silent,  severe  thinking  and  self-questioning,  and  laborious 
research  wherever  its  testing  was  needed — “  underground  work  ” 
of  which  his  friends  might  occasionally  by  chance  discover  some 
signs  in  conversation  or  correspondence,  but  for  which  he  took 
no  credit,  and  of  which  little  indication  was  given  except  in  the 
firmness  and  precision  of  his  reasoning. 

The  Gorham  decision,  with  the  debates  which  followed  it, 
was  perhaps  the  turning-point  of  his  life.  More  than  anything 
that  had  yet  happened,  it  threw  him  on  his  own  independent 
thoughts,  and  brought  him  face  to  face  with  them.  He  found 
himself  in  agreement  with  the  predestinarianism  of  St.  Augus¬ 
tine  :  and  in  the  expression  of  doctrine,  which  was  the  watch¬ 
word  of  his  party,  he  found  himself  at  issue  with  them.  He 
threw  himself  with  characteristic  ardour  and  patient  labour 
into  the  task  of  reconciling  the  Christian  tradition  about  bap¬ 
tism  with  the  theology  of  what  is  called  Calvinism,  with  the 
metaphysics  of  Jonathan  Edwards.  The  three  volumes  which 
followed  one  another  on  these  questions  he  himself  valued 
beyond  anything  that  he  did,  as  examples  of  true  and  hard 
thinking,  and  of  clear,  nervous,  cogent  argument.  But  they 
separated  him  distinctly,  on  this  important  point  at  least,  from 
his  party.  Whether  he,  or  any  one  else,  could  succeed  in  what 
he  undertook,  is  perhaps  doubtful.  But  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  effort  and  stress  which  these  investigations  put  upon 
his  powers  greatly  added  to  their  strength,  range,  and  freedom. 


Introduction . 


xlv 


He  stood  very  much  alone  as  a  theologian.  With  the  Evan¬ 
gelicals,  though  he  respected  them,  and  readily  acted  with 
them,  he  never  quite  sympathised  in  their  general  spirit  and 
tone.  He  gradually  approximated  in  some  important  points  to 
their  theological  language ;  but  in  his  mouth  it  had  a  larger 
meaning.  His  friendships,  his  main  interests,  his  political 
tendencies,  were  still  with  the  party  from  which  he  had  par¬ 
tially,  yet,  so  far,  very  formally,  separated  himself.  He  never 
could  cease  to  be  a  Churchman,  and,  in  a  very  real  sense,  a 
High  Churchman.  He  fought  very  hard  to  preserve  the 
Church  character  of  University  institutions  from  the  revolution 
which  has  almost  overwhelmed  them.  But  the  developments 
of  his  old  party  were  not  to  his  taste.  And  he  found  no  other 
with  which  to  ally  himself. 

The  long  exercise  of  writing  and  of  controversy  had  percep¬ 
tibly  affected  his  style  of  composition.  It  had  worked  clear  of 
a  good  deal  of  luxuriant  ornament.  His  mode  of  statement 
had  become  simpler,  more  orderly,  better  proportioned ;  there 
was  greater  ease  in  it,  and  greater  perspicuity.  His  character¬ 
istic  power  had  strengthened  of  enforcing  an  idea  or  an  aspect 
of  a  subject  by  presenting  it  again  and  again  in  an  inex¬ 
haustible  variety  of  forms,  urged  with  the  repeated  force  of  a 
battering-ram.  He  had  learned  severity  and  repression  towards 
himself ;  he  had  learned  in  writing  to  economise  feeling, 
imagination,  poetry.  And  he  had  increased  greatly  his  original 
gift  of  rising  through  words  to  things,  and  of  realising  vividly, 
boldly,  and  justly  what  he  was  dealing  with,  whether  it  was  a 
phenomenon  or  a  difficulty,  or  an  objection,  or  a  deep  and 
fundamental  truth.  Thus  furnished,  he  came  from  contro¬ 
versies  within  the  Church  to  the  great  issues  raised  by  modern 
scepticism  and  unbelief  as  to  all  religion.  As  might  be  ex- 


xlvi 


Introduction. 


pected,  lie  recognised  to  the  full  their  inexpressible  gravity. 
He  had  no  patience  for  the  petty  playing  with  the  fringes  and 
details  of  vast  questions,  which  satisfies  so  many  of  the  half- 
believing  half- unbelieving  professors  of  a  Christianity  of  their 
own  devising.  He  placed  before  himself  distinctly,  before  his 
reason,  and  not  less  before  his  imagination,  what  the  infidel 
argument  had  to  say  for  itself  in  its  most  serious  and  most 
dangerous  bearing,  and  addressed  himself  to  meet  it  in  its  full 
weight.  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  argument  of  the 
Hampton  Lectures  on  Miracles,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  they 
lifted  the  discussion  to  the  level  which  it  ought  to  occupy ;  the 
ablest  of  his  opponents  have  acknowledged  the  living  grasp 
which  he  had  of  the  question ;  and  when  they  have  dwelt  on 
his  unfamiliarity  with  the  facts  of  science,  they  have  really 
evaded  the  force  of  his  appeal  to  that  reason  on  which  science 
itself  must  rest.  His  earnestness  and  his  power  gave  a  new 
interest  to  the  argument ;  he  equally  impressed  Professor 
Tyndall  and  the  unceremonious  disputants  of  the  National 
Reformer. 

In  1871  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  had  given  him  the  first  prefer¬ 
ment  which  he  had  to  offer,  a  Canonry  at  Worcester  in  1869, 
recommended  him  for  the  Eegius  Professorship  of  Divinity  at 
Oxford.  It  was  filling  that  great  chair  with  a  man  who,  among 
the  many  distinguished  Professors  of  secular  learning  in  the 
University,  was  not  unworthy  to  rank  with  the  ablest  of  them 
as  the  representative  of  Christian  Theology.  He  wanted  but 
one  qualification — the  faculty  of  popular  teaching.  The  younger 
men  listened  to  his  lectures  without  knowing,  many  of  them, 
the  unusual  excellence  of  what  they  heard.  But  if  the  younger 
men  missed  it,  it  was  not  missed  by  older  men,  more  able  to 
measure  originality  and  power,  and  to  judge  what  he  laid 


Introduction. 


xlvii 


before  them.  He  became  a  teacher  of  teachers  :  he  discussed 
with  a  class  of  tutors  the  graver  difficulties  presented  by  the 
thought  of  the  time  :  and  a  specimen  of  these  lectures  has 
been  preserved  to  us  in  the  last  published  of  his  volumes,  a 
volume  which  he  could  not  himself  revise,  on  the  moral  diffi¬ 
culties  of  the  Old  Testament,  “the  Euling  Ideas,”  as  he  called 
it,  “  in  Early  Ages.”  His  place,  too,  as  Professor,  was  in  the 
University  pulpit.  How  he  taught  there  the  volume  of  sermons 
which  so  astonished  the  world,  sufficiently  shows;  though  it 
seems  that  many  of  those  who  heard  the  sermons  preached 
hardly  appreciated  them  adequately  till  they  read  them  in  print. 

And  so  has  ended  a  very  noble  and  pure  life ;  a  life  of  hard 

% 

labour  and  high  thinking,  and  frank  and  healthy  enjoyment — 
enjoyment,  thankful  and  unsuspicious,  of  nature,  of  travel,  of 
art,  of  famous  places  and  beautiful  scenes,  of  music,  of  the  love 
and  companionship  of  friends.  It  was  a  disinterested  and 
unselfish  life,  without  ambition,  yet  not  without  satisfaction  at 
receiving  the  recognition  or  the  reward  which  he  had  not 
thought  of  claiming.  In  these  respects,  all  was  very  natural 
and  genuine  and  real.  And  this  is  all  the  more  remarkable, 
because  the  admiration  of  greatness  was  with  him  a  sort  of 
passion.  He  required  it,  and  was  not  content  without  it,  in 
ideas,  in  arguments,  in  character,  in  actions,  in  his  own  gifts 
and  benefits  and  sympathies.  It  was  to  a  certain  extent  the 
cause  of  occasional  inequality  and  one-sidedness.  In  the  face 
of  large  considerations,  in  reasoning  or  in  practical  matters,  he 
did  not  always  take  due  account  of  smaller  ones,  or  of  what 
appeared  such  to  him.  He  had  a  keen  and  constant  sense  of 
the  vast  wonderfulness  of  the  familiar  things  of  life  and  the 
world — the  great  strangeness  of  its  good,  the  great  strangeness 
of  its  evil.  Ho  one,  without  such  a  sense,  could  have  written 


xlviii 


Introduction. 


his  article  on  the  Book  of  Job,  or  his  sermons  on  the  Pharisees, 
and  on  the  “  Beversal  of  Human  Judgments.”  He  had  a  pro¬ 
found  trust  in  the  argumentative  force  in  itself  of  a  great  and 
just  conception,  such  as  the  idea  of  Design,  on  which  he  wrote 
a  remarkable  paper  in  the  Quarterly  Review.  The  feeling  of 
scorn  came  out  strongly  in  him  at  any  attempt  to  juggle  away 
what  is  clear,  or  to  escape  by  logical  subtleties  from  any  broad 
principle  of  common  sense  and  reason.  And  with  his  large 
general  views  there  always  mingles  an  effort  to  exhibit  and 
test  them  in  the  individual  and  the  concrete,  after  the  manner 
of  great  dramatists  and  novelists.  No  one  had  a  livelier  sense 

O 

of  the  absurd ;  no  one  dwelt  with  more  amusement  on  the 
oddnesses  and  incongruities  of  men’s  conduct  and  condition. 
And  few  men  with  such  strong  and  sacred  convictions  have  set 
themselves  more  carefully  to  cultivate  the  difficult  virtue  of 
justice. 

The  marks  of  his  large-heartedness  and  height  of  character 
come  out  in  his  writings.  Those  who  knew  him  personally 
will  remember  the  sweetness,  the  affectionateness,  the  modesty, 
the  generosity,  which,  behind  an  outside  that  to  strangers 
might  seem  impassive,  his  friends  always  found.  A  singular 
mixture  of  persistent  eagerness  which  would  not  be  denied, 
with  constant  calmness  and  even-mindedness,  pervaded  -his 
daily  life.  With  great  capacity  for  disapproval,  and  for  strong 
and  contemptuous  indignation,  few  people  have  seen  him  lose 
his  temper ;  indeed,  to  show  temper  was  a  fault  which  he  did 
not  easily  excuse.  His  patience,  his  uncomplaining  and  un¬ 
shaken  cheerfulness,  his  habitual  serenity,  his  unalarmed  trust 
in  God,  his  considerateness  for  his  friends  and  warm  sympathy 
with  their  interests,  were  never  more  signally  shown  than  in 
the  trials  and  downward  progress  of  his  last  illness. 


I. 


LORD  STRAFFORD * 


(April  1843.) 


"VVe  have  no  fear  of  opening,  in  the  present  article,  on 
what  our  readers  will  consider  a  stale  or  threadbare  subject. 
It  is  with  pleasure  we  observe,  that  if  ever  the  decies  repetita 
placebit  has  applied  to  any  portion  of  history,  it  does  to  the 
times  of  the  Great  Bebellion,  and  antecedent  to  them.  It  may 
be,  that  that  was  the  last  break-up  of  the  old  system  in  Church 
and  State  ;  of  the  hierarchical  pretensions  in  the  one,  of  the 
feudal  and  chivalrous  in  the  other.  It  may  be,  again,  that 
times  of  danger  and  commotion  are  most  favourable  for  great 
and  noble  manifestations  of  human  character.  It  may  be,  that 
when  men  die  for  their  principles  they  are  supposed  to  have 
something  to  say  for  themselves,  and  that,  with  peculiar  signifi- 
cancy,  they  being  dead  yet  speak.  The  deaths  of  such  men 
are  great  facts,  which,  amid  the  shadows  and  uncertainties  of 
history,  posterity  lays  hold  of,  recognises,  and  feels  as  beacons 
in  her  troubled  and  stormy  atmosphere.  Look  to  the  end, 
says  the  moralist ;  the  historian  says  the  same ;  and  as  the 
orator  placed  the  essence  of  his  art  in  action,  action,  action, 
just  so,  between  a  nation  and  her  great  man, — the  end,  the  end, 
the  martyr-consummation,  concentrating  the  energies  of  a 
life  in  one  grand  blow,  is  the  appeal  which  staggers  and  over¬ 
comes  her,  which  vibrates  through  her  frame  for  ages.  Facts 
like  these  are  the  arms  and  engines  of  history,  her  two-handed 
swords  and  battle-axes,  her  sledge-hammers  and  her  battering- 

*  Lardner's  Cabinet  Cyclopcedia ,  vol.  2  :  Eminent  British  Statesmen.  By 
John  Forster,  Esq.  London,  1836. 

M.E.— I.] 


A 


2 


Lord  Strafford. 


rams,  that  beat  down  prejudices,  crush  subtleties,  level  the 
pasteboard  argument  into  a  high-road  for  her  truths.  These 
and  these  only  can  meet  the  inextinguishable  appetite  in 
human  nature  for  the  distinct,  the  definite,  and  positive,  in 
truth  or  error  as  it  may  be  ;  that  aching  void  which  clamours 
for  supply,  and  which  the  teacher,  political  or  religious,  must 
somehow  fill,  or  must  give  way.  No  cause  can  prevail,  no 
principle  conquer,  without  them  ;  a  system  that  has  not  these 
must  crumble  and  die.  Happy  and  glorious  that  high-born 
regal  line,  who  from  the  foundation  of  the  world  have 
one  and  one  been  singled  out  for  this  especial  office,  who  in 
evil  and  stormy  days,  when  the  flood  was  coming  in,  have 
filled  the  frightful  gap  up  with  themselves ,  and  given  to  justice 
and  truth  the  testimony  of  their  being.  More,  far  more  than 
recompensed  are  they  for  what  the  hand  of  violence  and  the 
tongue  of  calumny  inflicted  during  their  brief  sojourn,  if 
enabled  to  bequeath  to  the  cause  for  which  they  fought  the 
splendid  patronage  of  a  name ;  if  history  adopts  them  for  her 
own  ;  if  around  their  footsteps  linger  the  fascinations  of  poetry, 
and  upon  their  brow  sits  honour,  crowned  sole  monarch  of  the 
universal  earth. 

We  need  go  no  further  for  reasons  why  the  names  of  Laud, 
Charles,  and  Strafford  still  maintain  that  interest  in  the  public 
mind,  which  even  their  appearance  in  the  picture-gallery  and 
the  shop-wfindow  shows  them  to  possess.  It  is  a  fact  in  the 
trade,  we  believe,  that  the  demand  for  engravings  of  Charles 
has  almost  drained  the  stocks  of  the  dealers  in  the  metropolis 
and  other  places ;  and  the  artist  at  the  elder  University  has 
recently  supplied  casts  of  the  three  heads  for  lack  of  older 
memorials.  We  are  disposed  to  connect  these  and  many  other 
symptoms  with  the  general  longing  which  has  begun  to  be  felt 
for  a  deeper  ethics  and  religion  than  what  the  last  century 
supplied  to  us  ;  and  not  aspiring  to  the  research  of  those  generous 
travellers  who  have  lately  threaded  with  such  skill  the  forest 
gloom  of  mediaeval  antiquity,  shall  content  ourselves  with  a 
nearer  and  more  cognate  age,  over  which,  notwithstanding  a 
tremendous  revolution,  the  shadow  of  former  things  still 
brooded — an  age  in  which  Shakespeare  wrote  and  Strafford 


Lord  Strafford. 


o 

acted ;  and  without  further  preface  shall  beg  to  renew  the 
reader’s  acquaintance  with  one,  in  spite  of  alloy  and  extrava¬ 
gance,  a  genuine  great  man,  a  statesman  and  a  hero  of  whom 
we  may  be  proud. 

Thomas  Wentworth  was  born  in  London,  April  1593,  of  an 
ancient  and  knightly  family,  that  had  been  seated  at  Went¬ 
worth- Wodehouse,  in  the  county  of  York,  ever  since  the 
Conquest.  The  paternal  line  had  gradually  absorbed  into  it 
many  of  the  first  families  of  the  north.  Wentworth  repre¬ 
sented,  as  the  eldest  son,  the  ancient  blood  of  the  Wodehouses, 
Houghtons,  Fitzwilliamses,  Gascoignes,  and  alliances  with  the 
noble  houses  of  Clifford,  De  Spencer,  Darcy,  Quincy,  Ferrars, 
Beaumont,  Grantmesnil,  Peveril,  and  finally,  through  Margaret, 
grandmother  of  Henry  m,  mounted  up  to  the  Lancasters 
and  Plantagenets.  Though  his  whole  political  career  was  one 
continued  fight  with  the  aristocracy,  no  feudal  baron,  prince  of 
the  empire,  or  lord  of  the  isles,  had  ever  more  of  the  genuine 
aristocrat.  The  feudal  relation  of  the  lord  to  the  tenant  of 
the  soil  was  just  to  his  taste;  nor  was  he  without  pride  in  the 
regal  part  of  his  pedigree,  and  the  corner  of  his  escutcheon 
which  bore  the  three  lions.  The  compliment  might  have  been 
returned  :  nec  imbellem  feroces  progenerant  aquilce  columbam — 
often  a  deceptive  proverb — was  not  balked  in  his  case  ;  and  a 
heathen  poet  might  have  drawn,  in  old  epic  style,  crusading 
Eichard  in  the  Elysian  fields,  and  the  seer  directing  his  eye 
through  the  vista  of  ages  to  the  unborn  shade  of  the  last  of 
the  Plantagenets.  Difficult  it  might  have  been  to  persuade  the 
royal  fighter  that  parliaments  were  as  awkward  bodies  as 
armies  of  Saracens,  and  orders  of  council  as  hard  weapons  as 
two-handed  swords.  But  doubtless  convinced  of  this,  the  shade 
of  Cceur  de  Lion  would  have  stalked  the  prouder  over  the 
plains  of  asphodel,  as  his  eye  caught  the  vision  of  the  second 
“  Lion  ”  (so  nicknamed)  of  the  Plantagenet  stock. 

Of  his  youthful  days  we  know  little.  He  early  attained 
proficiency  in  the  fashionable  accomplishments  of  the  day,  and 
on  the  ample  Wentworth  manors  imbibed  that  taste  for  field 
sports,  especially  hawking  and  fishing,  which  he  always  re¬ 
tained.  To  the  last  he  was  a  keen  sportsman ;  and  thought 


4 


Lord  Strafford. 


himself  too  happy  if  from  the  toil  and  cares  of  his  Irish  ad¬ 
ministration,  he  could  only  escape  for  a  week  or  two  at  a  time 
to  Cosha,  his  “  park  of  parks,”  in  Wicklow  county,  and  hawk 
or  fish  for  hours  ankle-deep  in  mud  and  wet.  His  corre¬ 
spondence  with  Laud  at  some  of  these  seasons  contains  an 
amusing  mixture  of  political,  ecclesiastical,  and  sporting  in¬ 
telligence.  Presents  of  dried  fish,  of  the  Lord  Deputy’s 
catching,  went  up  for  the  Lent  table  at  Croydon,  but  the 
announcement  of  the  intended  generosity  mingles  with  a 
lament  over  the  “  decay  of  hawks  and  martins  in  Ireland,” 
which  deficiency  he  consoles  himself  he  shall  be  able  to  supply 
by  establishing  woods  for  their  especial  protection.  Neverthe¬ 
less  there  is  an  imperfection  attending  on  human  schemes, 
sporting  as  well  as  other :  if  the  martins  are  encouraged,  the 
“  pheasants  must  look  wTell  to  themselves :  ”  meantime  the 
Archbishop  shall  have  all  the  martin  skins  that  can  be  pro¬ 
cured  either  for  love  or  money.  Laud  keeps  up  the  pleasantry 
— is  duly  grateful  for  the  fish,  but  entreats  him  to  send  no 
more  hung  beef  from  the  Yorkshire  larder ;  the  last  having 
been  positively  too  tough  to  eat.  Strafford  apologises,  but 
will  not  give  up  the  merits  of  his  hung  beef ;  no,  the  beef  of 
Wentworth- Wodehouse  was  not  to  be  despised ;  he  was  cer¬ 
tain,  if  the  General  Assembly  (the  Scotch  were  just  invading) 
once  got  a  taste,  their  mouths  would  water  for  it  ever  after, 
and  there  would  be  no  getting  them  out  of  the  country. 

Such  is  the  playful  cover  under  which  he  disguises  the 
feeling  for  his  ancestral  home  and  the  scene  of  his  youth. 
Strafford  had  in  a  remarkable  degree  that  habit  of  mind  which, 
if  not  peculiar  to  English  statesmen,  may  still  be  called  highly 
English,  which  subordinates  entirely  to  the  original  of  the 
private  the  aftergrowth  of  the  public  man ;  disdaining  the 
pomp  which  identifies  the  man  with  the  station.  With  the 
same  mixture  of  pride  and  humility  with  which  Warren 
Hastings  left  his  native  Daylesford  with  the  noble  ambition  of 
being  its  squire,  conquered  India  in  the  interval,  and  became 
squire  of  Daylesford,  he  ever  in  the  thick  of  public  life  clung 
to  his  Yorkshire  associations,  and  to  the  circle  of  his  home — 
to  others,  what  the  world  had  made  him — to  himself,  himself, 


Lord  Strafford. 


5 


Wentworth  of  Wodehouse.  And  when  he  tore  himself  from 
their  endearments,  to  embark  for  the  last  time  for  Ireland,  and 
enter  on  the  wind-up  scene  of  his  life,  it  was  the  parting  con¬ 
solation  with  which  he  braced  his  mind,  “  I  shall  leave  behind 
me  as  a  truth  never  to  be  forgotten ,  the  full  and  perfect  remem¬ 
brance  of  my  being.” 

The  field  sports  and  other  kindred  reminiscences  of  Went- 
worth- Wodehouse  were  thus  not  without  their  more  serious 
effect  on  Strafford’s  character.  Meantime  a  solid  education 
was  going  on  in  Latin,  French,  and  the  best  English  authors. 
From  his  early  days  he  paid  great  attention  to  his  English 
style,  and  in  writing  common  notes  and  letters  would  take 
pains  to  do  them  well.  Nor  when  he  entered  at  a  very  early 
age  at  St.  John’s  College,  Cambridge,  was  he  at  all  backward 
in  appreciating  the  advantages  and  the  pleasures  of  a  place  of 
learning.  On  leaving  the  college  he  travelled  abroad  with  a 
tutor,  Mr.  Greenwood,  a  member  of  the  sister  University.  For 
both  college  and  tutor  he  retained  ever  after  the  warmest 
affection.  In  the  Strafford  correspondence  with  Laud  we 
glance  over  a  variety  of  facetious  challenges  to  one  another 
upon  their  rival  St.  Johns,  and  their  respective  “  Johnnisms.” 

“  What  means  this  Johnnism  of  yours?”  is  the  laugh  of  the 
Primate  at  a  puritanical  slip  of  his  friend’s  pen — “  What  means 
this  Johnnism  of  yours, — till  the  rights  of  the  pastors  be  a  little 
more  settled  ?  You  learned  this  from  old  Alvye  or  Billy 
Nelson  ?  Well ,  I  see  the  errors  of  your  breeding  will  stick  by 
you  ;  pastors  and  elders  and  all  will  come  in  if  I  let  you  alone.” 
Greenwood  remained  his  intimate  and  constant  adviser  till  he 
left  for  Ireland,  whither  Wentworth  endeavoured  to  bring  him, 
but  could  not  prevail  upon  him  to  leave  his  cure.  Though 
separated,  however,  they  kept  up  an  affectionate  correspond¬ 
ence.  Greenwood  was  confided  with  all  plans  and  secrets  of 
the  family,  and  “  one  who,  on  a  good  occasion,  would  not  deny  his 
life  to  you,”  did  the  Lord  Deputy,  with  heartfelt  gravity  of 
gratitude,  subscribe  himself  to  his  old  tutor. 

His  University  education  and  continental  travels  completed, 
introduced  him  a  scholar  and  a  cavalier  into  political  and 
fashionable  life.  He  had  a  tall  and  graceful  person,  which, 


6 


Lord  Strafford. 


even  when  bowed  by  years  of  sickness,  retained  its  symmetry, 
and  aristocratical  features,  not  handsome,  but  full  of  dignity  and 
command.  A  head  of  thick  dark  hair,  which  he  wore  short,  and 
a  singular  complexion,  at  once  “  pallid  ”  and  “  manly  black,” 
like  polished  armour,  heightened  the  Strafford  physiognomy. 
The  cares  of  State  and  his  terrible  illnesses  added  a  ruggedness 
he  had  not  naturally  ;  and  his  enemies,  in  allusion  to  the 
savage  character  which  they  were  so  fond  of  attributing  to  him, 
discovered  a  likeness  in  his  face  to  the  lion.  Strafford  had  a 
disgust  for  this  resemblance,  which  an  assumed  carelessness  and 
a  “  never  mind,  leonis  facies  facies  hominis”  as  the  proverb  says, 
ill  concealed.  After  all,  to  look  like  a  lion  is  not  to  look 
like  a  fool,  a  knave,  or  a  coward ;  but  he  could  not  bear  the 
imputation  which  it  implied.  One  article  of  beauty  he  had 
on  the  highest  authority — a  pair  of  delicate  white  hands,  pro¬ 
nounced  by  Queen  Henrietta  Maria  to  be  “  the  finest  in  the 
world.” 

When  with  all  the  advantages  of  connection,  wealth, 
talent,  and  education,  Sir  Thomas  Wentworth  (for  he  had 
succeeded  to  the  baronetcy)  found  himself  at  the  age  of 
twenty  fairly  launched  into  London  life,  the  possessor  of  a 
paternal  estate  of  six  thousand  a  year — an  immense  income 
in  those  days — representative  of  his  native  county  in  Parlia¬ 
ment,  and  husband  of  the  eldest  daughter  of  the  Earl  of 
Cumberland  :  but  far  from  aiming  at  the  character  of  a  public 
man,  he  does  not  seem  even  to  have  regarded  his  education  as 
finished.  He  continued  it,  only  with  the  differences  that  dis¬ 
tinguish  the  grown-up  person’s  from  the  boy’s  tasks.  There 
is  something  highly  significant  in  that  year  after  year’s  patient 
attendance  on  the  proceedings  of  the  Star-Chamber,  which 
commenced  from  this  time.  The  Star-Chamber  in  those  days, 
besides  being  the  highest  in  point  of  rank  and  of  ultimate 
appeal,  had  the  most  comprehensive  and  miscellaneous  routine 
of  business  of  any  court  in  the  kingdom.  A  crowd  of  causes, 
civil,  political,  ecclesiastical,  fiscal,  daily  rolled  in ;  a  mixed 
and  parti-coloured  body  of  judges,  bishops,  lawyers,  secretaries 
of  state,  and  lords  of  the  household  presided.  The  names  of 
Bacon  and  Coke,  Carr  and  Buckingham,  Abbot  and  Laud, 


Lord  Strafford. 


7 


Weston  and  Coventry,  reigned  during  this  period.  Seven  long 
years  did  Strafford  devote  to  this  attendance ;  and,  out  of  this 
rich  and  intricate  scene,  the  great  facts  of  law,  politics,  and 
human  nature  gradually  submitted  themselves  to  his  observa¬ 
tion,  formed  into  groups,  fixed  into  rules,  subsided  into  prin¬ 
ciples. 

His  private  exercises  were  of  the  same  practical  character. 
He  would  often  compose  speeches  on  subjects  on  which  some 
distinguished  specimen  of  rhetoric  or  argument  was  extant,  and 
afterwards  compare  his  own  with  the  classical  model,  noting 
accurately  the  different  points  in  which  his  came  short  of  it, — 
a  practice,  by  the  way,  highly  illustrative  of  his  general  habit 
of  mind.  He  was  always  a  severe  judge  of  his  own  per¬ 
formances,  of  whatever  kind,  great  or  small,  and  would  have 
criticised  his  whole  career  of  statesmanship,  from  its  opening 
to  its  close,  with  the  same  candour  and  coolness  with  which 
he  saw  the  defects  of  half  a  morning’s  task  at  composition. 
General  literature,  poetry,  and  the  fine  arts,  came  in  as  a  relief 
to  his  severer  tasks.  Chaucer  and  Donne  were  his  favourite 
poets ;  the  metaphysical  or  internal  character  of  Donne’s 
pieces,  so  descriptive  of  a  struggling,  melancholy,  uneasy  mind, 
seems  to  have  constituted  their  charm.  He  was  fond  too  of 
the  pastoral  poetry  of  the  classics.  In  his  letters  we  come 
across  various  traits  of  a  taste  for  painting  and  architecture ; 
and  he  enjoyed  the  acquaintance  of  the  two  illustrious  masters 
of  those  arts,  Inigo  Jones  and  Yandyck,  which  he  found  time 
to  cultivate,  even  in  the  very  thick  of  his  Irish  administration. 

It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  the  Parliaments  of  which  he 
was  throughout  this  period  a  member  were  as  exciting  and 
alarming  ones  as  England  had  yet  seen.  The  first  entered  into 
the  famous  contest  with  James  about  the  royal  imposts  on  mer¬ 
chandise  ;  the  second  impeached  Bacon  and  Middlesex,  and 
was  dismissed  in  anger  after  the  celebrated  “  Protestation,” 
for  which.  Sir  Edward  Coke,  Pym,  and  Selden  were  imprisoned, 
and  others  of  its  most  distinguished  members  banished  on  the 
King’s  service  to  Ireland.  The  romantic  journey  of  Prince 
Charles  to  the  Spanish  Court,  the  rupture  with  Spain  in  con¬ 
sequence,  and  Buckingham’s  transient  gleam  of  popularity, 


8 


Lord  Strafford. 


gave  it  additional  interest  and  animation.  Throughout  these 
movements,  which  extended  over  a  period  of  ten  years,  we  look 
in  vain  for  any  speech  of  Strafford’s  in  the  journals  of  the 
House.  He  was  active  as  a  country  gentleman,  and  paid  the 
greatest  attention  to  his  duties  as  Custos  Rotulorum,  which  he 
was  glad  to  do  for  practice  and  county  feeling’s  sake ;  hut  on 
the  great  theatre  of  the  world  he  was  silent — contented  appa¬ 
rently  to  bide  his  time,  to  work  under  ground  till  he  came  up 
naturally  to  the  surface,  and  mounted  by  the  force  of  events 
to  the  position  for  which  nature  intended  him. 

The  movement  which  did  eventually  lift  him  to  this  posi¬ 
tion  is  a  part  of  his  life  which  has  been  much  canvassed,  but 
of  which  neither  the  facts  nor  the  motives  have  been  fairly 
given.  The  ordinary  statement  is,  that  having  been  through¬ 
out  his  parliamentary  career  a  member  and  leader  of  the 
democratical  party,  he  all  at  once  went  over  to  the  Court,  and 
accepted  office.  This  is  not  true.  Strafford  was  always  a 
royalist,  which  King  James  showed  his  sense  of  by  giving  him 
a  high  appointment  in  his  own  county.  He  was  moreover 
silent  throughout  the  period  mentioned,  the  speeches  that  have 
been  attributed  to  him  being  spoken  by  a  different  person  of 
the  same  name — a  Mr.  Thomas  Wentworth,  representative  for 
Oxford.  True  however  it  is,  that  after  a  long  career  of  silence 
we  find  him  suddenly,  in  the  Parliament  of  1628,  at  the  head 
of  a  party  with  whom  he  never  acted  before,  and  never  after. 
Ten  years  of  suspense  and  neutrality,  a  momentary  alliance 
with  the  republicans,  and  then  war  with  them  to  the  knife — 
this  requires  explanation,  but  is  not  to  be  explained  upon  the 
ordinary  ground  of  political  inconsistency  and  self-interested 
ambition. 

The  nation  was  at  that  time  in  a  transition  state,  divided 
between  the  two  great  principles  of  authority  and  liberty, 
monarchical  and  popular  power.  The  former,  however,  was  in 
possession  of  the  field,  and  had  a  right  to  consider  itself  the 
legal  constitutional  principle,  if  the  precedents  and  the  sanc¬ 
tions  of  a  thousand  years  are  to  go  for  anything.  Whereas 
now  the  throne  is  the  formal,  the  parliament  the  real,  part  of 
the  constitution,  in  those  days  the  throne  was  the  reality, 


Lord  Strafford. 


9 


and  parliament  tlie  form  :  monarchy,  not  of  the  limited  and 
ambiguous,  but  Iona  fide  character,  was  the  constitutional 
government  of  the  country  up  to  the  time  of  the  Rebellion 
triumphing  over  and  ipso  facto  deadening  and  nullifying 
whatever  of  charter  or  document  was  technically  opposed  to  it. 
We  know  not  what  is  to  constitute  legitimacy,  what  is  to  be 
considered  as  establishing  a  principle  in  politics,  and  authorising 
any  form  of  government  whatever,  if  it  is  not  the  uniform 
practice  of  centuries.  Facts  constitute  in  time  prescription, 
and  surely  in  matters  of  State  prescription  is  everything ;  we 
are  not  contending  against  those  who  think  a  strict  monarchy 
in  itself  unnatural  and  immoral.  A  long  course  of  acknow¬ 
ledged  and  admitted  acts  of  power,  a  standard  formed,  a  tone 
and  a  feeling  created  and  sustained,  a  certain  impregnation  of 
the  whole  political  atmosphere — in  a  word,  the  action  of 
uniform  precedent — settles  and  establishes  that  monarchy,  or 
that  democracy,  as  it  may  be,  which  it  favours.  People  are 
not  slow"  in  admitting  its  virtue  in  the  one  case,  and  why  should 
they  deny  it  in  the  other  ?  Antiquarians  may  refer  us  to 
Saxon  Witenagemots,  and  talk  of  a  theory  of  liberty  which 
was  never  obliterated  in  our  national  charters  ;  we  ask  simply 
what  was  the  matter  of  fact  with  respect  to  the  government  of 
the  country — we  want  to  know  not  what  was  on  parchment, 
but  what  was  done.  The  grave  historian  who  informs  us  that 
monarchical  precedents  “  had  for  centuries  thwarted  the  opera¬ 
tion  and  obscured  the  light  of  our  free  constitution ,”  answers  us 
most  satisfactorily  if  he  will  only  allow  us  to  separate  his  fact 
from  his  mode  of  stating  it.  Monarchy  was  the  working- 
principle  of  the  State  in  those  days  ;  and  it  is  miserable  trifling, 
and  standing  upon  a  play  of  words,  to  assert  the  identity  of 
an  assembly  of  burgesses  who  met  compulsorily,  and  were 
dismissed  gladly,  because  it  called  itself  a  parliament,  with  the 
Parliament  of  the  present  day — to  antedate  English  liberty  five 
hundred  years,  and  pare  down  the  monarchy  of  Edward  the 
First  to  the  model  of  De  Lolme  upon  the  Constitution. 

The  monarchical  principle  was  indeed  gradually  weakening 
and  sinking  under  the  Stewarts,  and  the  popular  one  rising 
into  strength,  reinforced  by  a  formidable  ally  in  the  spirit  of 


IO 


Lord  Strafford. 


religions  fanaticism.  The  old  line  of  kings  gone,  the  Stewarts 
unfortunately  flagged  just  in  the  very  talents  which  were 
necessary  for  the  times  :  they  could  interest  and  attract,  but 
had  none  of  the  iron  of  rule  in  their  constitution.  And  their 
appointments  of  ministers  did  not  supply  their  own  deficiency : 
Carr,  a  mere  spoilt  child,  shamed  his  royal  employer  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world,  and  Buckingham,  gallant,  generous,  and  not 
without  address,  governed  the  King  and  left  the  nation  to  itself. 
Still,  the  old  monarchy  had  even  now  possession  of  the  field, 
had  descent  and  precedent  on  its  side.  The  constitution  of 
1688,  now  the  law  of  the  land,  was  as  yet  the  intruder  and 
innovator,  just  beginning  to  lift  its  head,  and  peep  above 
ground  :  its  successful  establishment  since  cannot  antedate  its 
rights  :  nay,  that  middle  system  had  hardly  peeped  ;  the  con¬ 
test  was,  as  its  issue  under  Cromwell  proved,  between  monarchy 
and  republicanism.  It  was  the  right  and  it  was  the  duty  of 
any  loyal  subject  of  the  day  who  hated  revolution,  of  any  one 
who,  upon  whatever  theory,  chose  to  prefer  absolutism  to  a 
mixed  polity,  to  defend  if  he  could  the  monarchy  of  the  Plan- 
tagenets  and  Tudors,  and  drive  the  popular  spirit  into  its  hole 
again.  And  if  these  were  Strafford’s  politics,  they  mingled  at 
the  same  time  with  far  higher  and  more  ethical  ideas  of  the 
monarchical  position  than  ever  Plantagenet  or  Tudor  had 
realised.  No  advocate  for  the  domination  of  brute  force,  or  an 
oriental  despotism,  wanton,  indolent,  and  luxurious,  he  wished 
to  establish  simply  an  effective  monarchy — one  that  would  do 
its  work — look  after  the  people  in  real  earnest,  and  feel  itself 
responsible  for  their  physical,  moral,  and  religious  improve¬ 
ment.  If  he  thought  that  such  a  government,  strong  and  self- 
confident  in  conscious  purity  and  greatness,  would  be  invincible 
against  pressure  from  below,  let  it  be  so  ;  and  let  it  be  called 
a  despotism  :  it  was  a  despotism  perfectly  consistent  with 
popular  assemblies  and  popular  rights,  because  it  undertook  to 
carry  the  nation  along  with  it,  to  make  the  popular  mind  con¬ 
form  itself,  and  bow  all  hearts  to  its  legitimate  and  well-earned 
supremacy.  The  concordant  will  of  sovereign  and  people 
combined  absolutism  and  democracy  in  one  system.  But  of 
this  further  on. 


Lord  Strafford ’ 


1 1 

Strafford  had  just  the  head  and  arm  necessary  for  such  a 
project;  he  knew  it,  and  he  had  the  wish  naturally  accom¬ 
panying  such  knowledge.  The  gatherings  of  a  long  course  of 
labour  and  observation,  moulded  into  statesmanlike  form  within 
his  mind,  longed  for  their  practical  development  and  trial ;  and 
that  right  arm,  which  was  to  subdue  Ireland,  hung  heavy  and 
listless  by  his  side.  He  longed  to  try  the  bow  which  favourite 
after  favourite,  and  courtier  after  courtier,  had  tried  and  could  not 
bend.  Nor,  if  we  may  trust  a  certain  indefinable  importance 
which  had  grown  up  about  him  (strangely  enough,  considering 
his  parliamentary  inertia ),  had  such  an  idea  escaped  others  ; 
or  the  determined  neglect  of  effort  and  display  prevented  the 
rise  of  a  political  reputation,  which  marked  him  out  in¬ 
evitably  for  State  employment.  There  was  one  great  obstacle 
however :  Buckingham  was  then  the  only  avenue  to  office  : 
and  the  whole  soul,  moral  and  political,  of  Strafford  nau¬ 
seated  the  thought  of  accepting  office  as  the  proUge  of  Buck¬ 
ingham. 

Strafford’s  character — we  discern  it  immediately — ran  into 
what  may  be  called  poetical  excess  on  the  article  of  proper 
pride  and  independence.  In  the  political  and  social  depart¬ 
ment  alike,  while  some  are  for  ever  pushing  and  others  for 
ever  insinuating  themselves,  while  obtrusive  minds  force,  and 
amiable  ones  coquet  with  the  embraces  of  society  ;  a  man  here 
and  there  is  all  self-respect,  will  not  part  with  one  jot  of 
secret  honour,  will  not  stifle  a  whisper  of  internal  law,  will 
not  be  enticed  from  the  home  within,  will  not  move  from  be¬ 
neath  the  high,  o’erhanging,  overawing  shadow  of  himself. 
Strongly  as  Strafford  felt  his  vocation  for  government,  he  would 
rather  have  died  in  inactivity,  obscurity,  and  oblivion,  than  have 
lowered  himself  by  the  process  of  admission  to  it,  were  it  only 
the  ordinary  obsequiousness  which  is  thought  legitimate  by  the 
courtier.  It  went  utterly  against  his  nature  to  make  advances, 
to  beg  and  ask  for  what  he  wanted,  to  force  an  alliance  which 
was  not  offered,  or  incur  obligations  where  he  had  not  sympathy 
and  respect.  He  made  no  difference  between  an  enemy  and 
no-friend  :  and  would  perish,  he  said,  before  he  “  borrowed  his 
being  ”  from  either. 


Lord  Strafford. 


1 2 


On  the  other  hand,  the  favourite  would  have  his  supremacy 
duly  recognised  by  all  aspirants  to  office  ;  he  would  be  courted, 
and  on  Strafford’s  withholding  this  attention,  formed  a  dislike 
for  him,  assumed  the  Court  bully,  and  commenced  a  series 
of  irritating  personal  attacks.  Sir  John  Savile’s  notorious  in¬ 
competency  had  originally  vacated  the  post  of  Custos  Rotulo- 
rum,  which  Strafford  now  held :  Buckingham  chose  to  believe 
that  Savile  had  been  unfairly  ousted,  and  proposed  his  rein¬ 
statement.  His  opponent’s  address,  however,  foiled  him. 
Strafford  made  out  his  case  so  clearly  that  the  minister  was 
obliged  to  sound  a  retreat,  which  he  did  in  that  showy,  hand¬ 
some  way  which  so  became  him,  with  many  courteous  bows 
and  apologies.  He  even  went  so  far  as  to  give  the  obstinate 
man  an  opportunity  of  recovering  his  ground  and  getting  into 
favour.  A  most  amicable  message  reached  Strafford,  the  drift 
of  which  could  not  be  mistaken ;  which  as  much  as  said,  Do 
court  me,  do  beg  me  to  befriend  you,  do  be  humble  and  put 
yourself  under  my  patronage  ;  do  make  me  your  channel  to 
the  royal  presence  ;  I  will  give  you  employment  and  make  a 
great  man  of  you.  A  polite  but  guarded  answer  was  returned, 
that  Strafford  was  ready  to  pay  the  Duke  all  the  attention 
and  deference  which  he  could  as  “  an  honest  man  and  a 
gentleman.”  The  concession,  such  as  it  was,  was  to  appear¬ 
ance  taken  well,  and  the  haughty  antagonists  shook  hands  at 
the  meeting  of  the  Parliament  at  Oxford.  But  the  peace  was 
a  hollow  one,  and  the  very  next  act  of  the  minister  was  to 
prick  him  for  Sheriff,  to  disqualify  him  for  sitting  in  the 
ensuing  Parliament.  Wentworth  was  urged  by  the  popular 
party  to  follow  the  example  of  Sir  Edward  Coke,  Sir  Francis 
Seymour,  and  Sir  Robert  Phillips,  in  pushing  his  election 
notwithstanding.  But,  though  indignant  in  the  extreme,  the 
advice  of  his  father-in-law,  Lord  Clare,  prevailed ;  he  decided 
that  the  King’s  service  took  precedence  above  that  of  Parlia¬ 
ment,  quietly  took  the  sheriffdom,  and  entered  into  the  routine 
of  county  business.  The  apologetic  Buckingham  immediately 
disclaimed  having  had  any  concern  with  the  act,  declaring 
that  he  was  in  Holland  at  the  time  ;  nevertheless  a  still  harder 
blow  followed.  As  Strafford  was  presiding  over  a  full  meeting 


Lord  Strafford. 


of  his  county,  a  writ  was  put  into  his  hand,  once  more  dis¬ 
missing  him  from  the  post  of  Custos  Eotulorum.  The  insult 
in  the  face  of  day  was  too  much  for  a  choleric  temper,  and 
produced  an  instantaneous  and  vehement  appeal  from  Strafford 
to  the  feelings  of  the  meeting  : — 

“  My  Lords  and  Gentlemen, — I  have  here,  even  as  I  sit,  received 
his  Majesty’s  writ  for  putting  me  out  of  the  Custoship  I  held  in 
the  commission  of  peace,  which  shall  by  me  be  dutifully  and  cheer¬ 
fully  obeyed  :  yet  I  could  wish  they  who  succeed  me  had  forborne 
this  time  this  service — a  place,  in  sooth,  ill-chosen,  a  stage  ill  pre¬ 
pared  for  venting  such  poor  vain  insulting  humour.  Nevertheless, 
since  they  will  needs  thus  weakly  breathe  upon  me  a  seeming  dis¬ 
grace  in  the  public  face  of  the  county,  I  shall  crave  leave  to  wipe 
it  away  as  openly,  as  easily ;  seeing  I  desire  not  to  overlive  the 
opinion  of  an  honest  man  among  you,  which  in  the  course  of  the 
world  we  see  others  regard  too  little. 

“  Shortly  then,  I  have  for  divers  years  served  the  last  King,  of 
ever-blessed  memory,  his  Majesty  that  now  is,  and  this  county,  in 
the  commissions  of  Oyer  and  Terminer,  that  of  the  peace  and 
counsel.  I  have  been  employed  from  hence  in  Parliament,  as  oft 
as  most  men  of  my  age,  and  now  attend,  albeit  unworthy,  as 
Sheriff.  Throughout  I  am  ready,  under  the  great  goodness  of  God, 
yet  with  all  humility  and  modesty,  to  justify  myself  in  spite  of 
any  detraction  or  calumny,  even  upon  the  price  of  my  life,  never  to 
have  declined  forth  from  the  open  and  plain  ways  of  loyalty  and 
truth  toward  their  Majesties,  never  to  have  falsified  in  a  tittle 
the  general  trust  of  my  county,  never  to  have  injured  or  overborne 
the  meanest  particular,  under  the  disguised  mask  of  justice  or 
power. 

“  Therefore  shame  be  from  henceforth  to  them  that  deserve  it, 
for  I  am  well  assured  now  to  enjoy  a  lightsome  quiet  as  formerly. 
The  world  may  well  think  I  knew  the  way  which  would  have  kept 
my  place :  I  confess,  indeed,  it  would  have  been  too  dear  a 
purchase,  and  so  I  leave  it.” 

The  Eubicon  once  crossed,  open  hostilities  alone  remained 
for  either  party.  Strafford  was  soon  visited  by  a  privy  seal 
demanding  a  contribution  to  Government ;  he  refused  it,  and 
was  imprisoned  in  the  Marshalsea,  and  afterwards  at  Deptford. 
These  proceedings  infuriated  him.  His  contempt  was  un¬ 
bounded  for  the  whole  class  of  courtiers ;  even  when  in  the 
very  height  of  office  he  could  never  bring  himself  to  speak  of 


Lord  Strafford. 


14 

them  but  as  “  Court  vermin”  the  pests  and  plagues  of  the  com¬ 
munity  ;  and  to  be  ridden  over  by  their  intrigues  would  have 
been  an  unpardonable  political  dishonour  in  his  eyes,  com¬ 
pared  to  which  the  ignominious  fate  of  being  kicked  to  death 
by  spiders  was  no  hyperbole.  Political  views  conspired  with 
the  sense  of  honour.  He  had  always  disliked,  and  stood 
taciturnly  aloof  from,  the  policy  of  the  Stewart  ministries  ;  he 
now  found  himself  singled  out  as  the  victim  and  butt  of  this 
very  policy.  The  statesman  and  the  individual  were  agreed  : 
he  wished  to  give  Buckingham  a  blow,  and  was  in  no  humour 
to  be  scrupulous  in  what  company  he  gave  it.  Misery  makes 
strange  bed-fellows  :  the  House  was  divided  between  the 
Court  and  the  opposition  ;  he  had  for  a  time  a  common  object 
with  the  anti-Buckingham  side,  and  he  was  a  man  who,  if  he 
acted  in  earnest,  could  not  well  help  taking  the  lead.  In  fine, 
the  Parliament  of  1628  presents  us  with  the  curious  and 
astonishing  spectacle  of  the  fierce  royalist  Strafford  taking  the 
field  at  the  head  of  the  “  Prynnes,  the  Pyms,  and  the  Bens,” 
against  the  King’s  government.  The  effect  was  instantaneous 
and  triumphant.  Hardly  had  the  silent  and  sullen  man  shown 
himself  in  his  new  character,  and  uttered  a  fiery  speech  or  two, 
than  the  Court  gave  way  ;  whether  they  saw,  as  the  poet  says, 
the  flame  upon  his  helmet,  or  heard  the  Achillean  shout, 
Buckingham  and  his  clique  fell  flat  before  him,  and  Strafford 
walked  over  them  into  office  an  unpledged  politician  and  an 
independent  man. 

We  do  not  however  strictly  justify  the  whole  of  Strafford’s 
part  in  this  contest.  Quick  and  stormy,  a  smoke,  a  flash,  and 
then  all  over — it  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  those  rough  pro¬ 
ceedings  into  which  great  men  have  been  sometimes  carried, 
even  by  an  excess  of  an  honourable  and  lofty  principle.  It 
should  be  considered  that  the  enmity  of  self-respect  is  not  the 
enmity  of  malice,  and  may  be  intense  and  energetic  without 
being  selfish.  Because  a  man  will  not  court  you,  you  perse¬ 
cute  and  bully  him — what  follows  ?  he  is  only  ten  times  more 
resolved  against  unbending;  nay,  more,  to  fortify  himself 
against  weakness  he  assumes  the  aggressive,  and  the  fear  of 
being  a  dastard  turns  him  into  a  foe  :  a  patriot  Coriolanus 


Lord  Strafford. 


15 


brings  down  the  Yolsci  upon  Borne,  and  a  royalist  Strafford 
inarches  “  the  Pyms,  the  Prynnes,  and  the  Bens  ”  upon  an 
inconsiderate  and  ostracising  Court. 

He  was  made  successively  a  Viscount,  Lord  President  of 
the  North,  and  Deputy  of  Ireland,  not  without  murmurs  of 
surprise  and  dissatisfaction,  which  once  or  twice  took  an 
ominous  form.  A  trifling  anecdote  indicates  what  many  felt. 
At  his  installation  as  Viscount,  which  took  place  with  great 
pomp  and  ceremony  at  Whitehall,  his  emblazoned  descent  from 
the  blood-royal  attracted  notice  ;  and  Lord  Powis  vented  his 
spleen  thus  briefly,  “  Dammy,  if  ever  he  comes  to  be  King  of 
England,  I  will  turn  rebel .”  With  deference  to  his  Lordship’s 
valour,  we  think  he  would  have  thought  a  second  time  about 
it.  Another  story  is  more  of  the  sober  earnest  character.  On 
the  eve  of  Strafford’s  elevation,  he  and  Pym  casually  met  at 
Greenwich,  when,  after  a  short  conversation  on  public  affairs, 
they  separated  with  these  memorable  words  addressed  by  Pym 
to  Strafford,  “  You  are  going  to  leave  its,  but  I  will  never  leave  you 
while  your  head  is  upon  your  shoulders .”  Strafford  needed  no 
such  warning  to  impress  him  with  a  sense  of  his  danger.  The 
favourite  oath  which  marked  the  Lord  Deputy’s  communication 
of  an  inflexible  resolve,  “  on  peril  of  my  life,”  to  which  upon 
notable  occasions  he  added,  “  and  that  of  my  children,”  tells 
a  tale. 

If  the  advantage  of  a  minister’s  post  is  to  be  measured  by 
the  scope  it  gives  for  his  talents,  no  more  fortunate  department 
could  have  fallen  to  Strafford  than  Ireland.  The  country 
presented  at  that  time,  in  most  awkward  combination,  the  diffi¬ 
culties  of  a  civilised  and  an  uncivilised  State.  Under  King 
James,  who  prided  himself,  not  undeservedly,  upon  his  atten¬ 
tion  to  her,  English  law  had  superseded,  to  a  great  extent,  the 
power  of  the  old  chieftains  ;  the  natives  had  been  brought 
down  from  their  mountains,  and  the  establishment  of  the 
Scotch  in  Ulster,  and  of  English  plantations  in  various  parts, 
had  given  a  move  to  agriculture,  and  encouraged  more  settled 
and  industrious  habits  in  the  people.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
looseness  of  the  monarchical  reins,  in  the  Stewart  hand,  had  in¬ 
creased  the  difficulties  of  government.  The  Irish,  while  they 


1 6 


Lord  Strafford. 


had  not  been  untaught  all  their  barbarism,  had  also  imbibed 
notions  of  political  liberty  which  they  had  not  before  ;  and  the 
new  Scotch  population,  as  Strafford  proved  to  his  cost,  were  a 
set  of  subjects  that  no  government  could  congratulate  itself 
upon.  The  power  of  the  chieftains  had  been  succeeded  by 
the  license  of  a  disorderly  nobility,  who,  if  they  could  not  con¬ 
trol  their  inferiors  as  they  had  before,  had  no  notion  of  being 
controlled  themselves  ;  corruption  had  crept  into  every  depart¬ 
ment  of  the  public  service ;  justice  was  feebly  and  partially 
administered ;  an  ill-disciplined  and  ill-provided  army  preyed 
upon  the  substance  of  the  common  people ;  monopolists 
swallowed  up  one  source  of  revenue,  the  nobility  who  had 
possessed  themselves  of  the  crown  lands,  the  other.  Church 
property  was  in  as  bad  case,  devoured  wholesale  by  the  nobility, 
and  the  wretched  remnant  seized,  in  the  shape  of  commendams 
and  fraudulent  wasting  fines,  by  a  covetous  puritanical  episco¬ 
pate  and  higher  clergy.  In  Church  and  State  alike,  from  the 
council  board,  the  judicial  bench,  and  the  episcopal  chair  down¬ 
wards,  every  man,  high  and  low,  was  engaged  in  the  noble 
employment  of  feathering  his  own  nest ;  and  Ireland  was  one 
Augean  stable  of  corruption.  Such  were  the  chaotic  materials 
out  of  which  Strafford  undertook  to  evolve  his  darling  project 
of  a  regeneration  of  the  monarchy. 

In  July  1633  he  arrived  in  Dublin,  settled  himself  in  his 
post,  made  new  arrangements  in  the  viceregal  court  and 
household,  sounded  the  people  about  him,  tried  his  strength  in 
various  encounters  with  individual  noblemen ;  and  after  he 
had  thus  felt  his  way,  and  got  information  enough,  decided  on 
his  great  plan. 

Before  the  monarchy  could  raise  its  head  and  do  anything 
for  the  country,  one  thing  was  absolutely  and  indispensably 
necessary  :  its  means  and  resources  must  be  increased — in 
other  words,  the  King  must  have  money.  Good  and  evil  have 
fought  for  this  ally  since  the  foundation  of  the  world :  the 
highest  contests  of  the  middle  ages  assumed  the  form  of  a 
mercantile  strife,  and  from  ideas  that  spanned  the  universe 
and  pierced  the  sky,  leaped  by  a  step  to  money.  Strafford’s 
monarchy,  grand  and  sacred  source  of  good,  sovereignty  of 


Lord  Strafford. 


17 


virtue,  empire  in  the  clouds,  wanted  money ;  and  how  to 
replenish  the  royal  purse  was  the  all-absorbing  question.  The 
difficulty  under  which  the  dynasty  of  the  Stewarts  had  writhed, 
Strafford  had  a  notion  he  could  settle,  and  proposed  a  hold 
move  for  the  purpose — an  Irish  Parliament. 

Of  all  the  projects  that  could  be  thought  of  for  extricating 
the  monarchy  out  of  its  difficulties,  the  most  repulsive,  the 
most  alarming,  and  the  most  nauseous,  to  a  Stewart,  was  that 
of  a  parliament.  A  menagerie  of  wild  beasts  let  loose,  an  army 
of  locusts,  monsters  from  the  vasty  deep,  Goths,  Huns,  and 
Tartars,  were  but  faint  symbols  of  the  terrible  political  image 
which  an  assembly  of  his  faithful  subjects  presented  to  him. 
Parliaments  were  intrinsically  odious,  unmanageable  things ; 
time  after  time  had  they  been  dismissed,  till  it  seemed  part  of 
their  constitution  to  be  so  dealt  with  ;  a  dogmatic  catena  con¬ 
demned  them ;  they  were  King  James’s  five  hundred  tyrants  ; 
Charles’s  “  hydras  cunning  and  malicious,”  and  “  cats  that 
grew  cursed  with  age ;  ”  three  had  recently  been  dismissed  in 
succession ;  and  the  King  had  quietly  made  up  his  mind  to  go 
on  without  them.  “Do  manage  without  a  parliament — any¬ 
thing  in  the  wide  world  but  a  parliament,”  was  the  almost 
supplicating  language  of  the  English  Cabinet  to  Strafford,  on 
his  first  broaching  the  thought.  Nevertheless,  Strafford  saw 
that  he  must  have  a  parliament — that,  odious  as  was  the 
encounter,  it  must  be  tried.  Parliaments  there  had  always  been; 
they  were  ingrained  in  the  English  constitution — its  working 
constitution — and  it  was  absurd  to  think  of  doing  without 
them.  Pacts  could  not  be  unmade  by  being  not  seen,  by  shut¬ 
ting  your  eyes  to  them,  by  turning  your  back  upon  them.  A 
parliament  therefore  must  be  held.  More  than  this :  he 
aspired  to  making  a  parliament  not  only  an  engine  of  supplies, 
a  mere  necessary  evil,  but  a  positive  gain,  and  addition  of 
strength  to  the  royalty. 

The  general  feebleness  of  the  Stewart  governments  may  be 
reduced  almost  to  one  defect — they  did  not  face  the  nation ; 
the  nation  looked  them  in  the  face,  steadily,  resolutely,  and — 
fearful  symptom  of  a  falling  cause — they  did  not  return  the 
look,  but  shrank  from  its  eye.  Discomfited  in  Parliament, 

M.E.-I.]  B 


1 8 


Lord  Strafford, 


they  consoled  themselves  at  home  with  theories  of  the  regal 
power ;  and  a  most  miserable  contrast  was  of  course  the 
result,  of  a  royalty  potent  in  theory,  inefficient  in  practice. 
“  I  make  both  law  and  gospel,”  said  King  J ames,  and  did  not 
uphold  his  omnipotence  with  his  little  finger.  Amidst  high- 
sounding  definitions  of  sovereignty,  the  privy  seals  came 
tremblingly  forth,  afraid  of  the  light  of  day,  and  scraped  up 
money  by  hole-and-corner  methods,  by  forced  loans  and  bene¬ 
volences,  from  the  private  subject.  This  was  not  the  method 
of  the  Lancasters  and  Plantagenets  :  no  theorisers,  but  prac¬ 
tical  men,  they  boldly  rode  forth  upon  their  royalty,  and  the 
nation,  like  a  generous  steed,  exulted  in  the  strong  hand  of  its 
rider.  “What  did  such  men  care  for  parliaments  ?”  thought 
Strafford.  A  regular  Plantagenet,  he  said,  “  Meet  your  parlia¬ 
ment,  catch  the  wolfs  eye  first,;  he  will  retire  if  you  confront 
him.  Let  this  be  the  test :  if  you  can  stand  it,  you  are  not 
merely  saved,  but  raised,  lifted  up  sky-high  ;  if  you  cannot, 
your  monarchy  is  good  for  nothing.”  “  I  did  always,”  were  his 
words  on  the  scaffold,  for  which  he  has  been  charged  with 
hypocrisy  with  no  sort  of  reason, — “  I  did  always  think  parlia¬ 
ments  to  be  the  happy  constitution  of  the  kingdom  and  nation, 
and  the  best  means,  under  God,  to  make  this  King  and  his 
people  happy.”  A  Parliament  accordingly  was  summoned. 

There  was  one  part  of  the  constitution  of  an  Irish  Parlia¬ 
ment,  which  made  it  much  easier  of  management  than  an 
English  one.  By  an  Act  passed  in  the  reign  of  Henry  vn., 
commonly  known  by  the  name  of  “  Poyning’s  Act,”  the  Houses 
could  only  debate  on  those  propositions  which  the  Lord 
Deputy  or  Council  put  before  them.  Strafford,  we  need  hardly 
say,  strongly  appreciated  the  merits  of  this  Statute ;  but, 
strange  as  it  may  appear,  its  very  monarchical  character  made 
the  home  government  afraid  to  stand  upon  it :  it  seemed  to  be 
too  much  of  a  privilege  to  claim  in  such  times  ;  and  what  took 
away  from  the  perilousness  of  a  session  once  begun,  required 
greater  courage  in  the  first  instance  to  seize  and  take  ad¬ 
vantage  of.  Moreover,  a  sort  of  legal  haze  had  gathered 
about  the  Act ;  an  historical  interpretation  was  claimed  for  it 
in  contradistinction  to  the  letter  by  the  popular  party,  and 


Lord  Strafford. 


19 


King  J ames,  it  was  said,  had  introduced  subsequently  to  it  the 
Magna  Charta  into  Ireland,  one  corollary  from  which  great 
document  was  freedom  of  debate.  Strafford  insisted  on  the 
letter,  and  with  a  side  sneer  at  King  James’s  administration 
for  not  “understanding  the  rules  of  government,”  snatched  the 
Statute  from  the  scissors  of  Mr.  Attorney- General  and  the 
lawyers,  who  were  preparing  to  cut  and  pare  it  down  to  modern 
shape,  and  safely  deposited  the  precious  document  in  his 
cabinet,  in  the  most  honoured  compartment  of  Irish  records. 

So  far,  so  good — Poyning’s  Act  was  gained  ;  but  this  very 
Act  brought  him,  as  a  very  first  step,  into  contact  with  a  minor 
legislative  assembly,  in  the  shape  of  the  Irish  Council,  who 
were  to  be  taken  into  his  deliberations  upon  the  subject  of  the 
propositions  to  be  made  to  Parliament. 

The  class  of  official  men  in  Ireland,  owing  to  the  distance 
and  laxity  of  the  home  government,  as  well  as  a  succession  of 
indifferent  Lord  Deputies,  had  become  anything  but  a  safe  and 
honourable  set  of  advisers.  Their  general  practice  was  to  get 
round  the  Lord  Deputy  on  his  arrival,  coax  and  flatter  him  into 
a  course  of  negligence,  or  some  precipitate  or  rapacious  act, 
after  which  they  hung  in  terrorem  over  him,  and,  with  his  ex¬ 
posure  in  their  power,  followed  their  own  devices  in  security. 
Strafford  soon  discovered  their  character,  and  looked  about  him 
with  very  like  the  caution  and  distrust  which  the  vicinity  of 
pickpockets  excites.  “  God  deliver  me,”  he  says,  “  from  this 
ill  sort  of  men,  and  give  me  grace  to  see  into  their  designs.” 
The  Council  was  composed  of  various  noblemen  and  high 
officers  of  State,  one  of  whom,  the  Chancellor,  as  second  in  the 
country  permanently,  considered  his  post  not  at  all  inferior  to 
the  changing  office  of  Lord  Deputy.  The  whole  body,  grown 
enormously  insolent  and  untractable,  put  the  Lord  Deputy 
virtually  at  defiance,  dictated  to,  harassed,  and  bullied  him. 

Strafford  had,  very  early  on  his  arrival,  taken  pains  to  teach 
these  officials  their  proper  place.  One  order,  procured  from 
the  King,  forbade  any  member  of  the  Council  sitting  covered  in 
the  Lord  Deputy’s  presence ;  by  another,  they  were  not  allowed 
to  speak  to  one  another  at  the  Council  board,  but  obliged  to 
address  every  word  to  the  Lord  Deputy.  Discipline  still  more 


20 


Lord  Strafford . 


humbling  to  the  stomachs  of  these  great  men  was  added,  ex 
abundantly  by  Strafford  himself.  The  most  punctual  and  busi¬ 
ness-like  man  in  the  empire  when  he  chose,  he  assembled  his 
Council,  and  kept  them  for  hours  waiting,  “  attending  on  his 
leisure.”  Thus  tamed  and  brought  into  something  like  train¬ 
ing,  they  had  also  been  augmented  by  two  friends  of  his  own, 
Sir  George  Radcliffe  and  Sir  Christopher  Wandesford.  Strongly 
averse  as  he  was  to  the  interference  of  official  counsellors,  no 
man  living  had  more  respect  than  Strafford  for  advisers  of  his 
own  choosing.  Years  of  uninterrupted  friendship,  during 
which  he  had  habitually,  and,  on  all  occasions,  public  and  pri¬ 
vate,  consulted  them,  had  proved  the  ability  and  affection  of 
these  two.  He  brought  them  with  him  to  Ireland,  and  they 
formed  his  Cabinet,  and  never  left  his  side.  They  three  met 
every  day,  debated  on  whatever  question  was  coming  on, 
argued  jpro  and  con.,  discussed  circumstances  and  probable  con¬ 
sequences,  and  thoroughly  sifted  it  before  bringing  it  into 
public. 

He  was  threatened  with  more  plagues,  in  the  shape  of 
councils  and  official  advisers,  even  than  the  Irish  Council 
board.  A  certain  body  existed,  known  by  the  name  of  the 
“  Lords  of  the  Pale,”  of  whose  privileges  it  was  difficult  at  that 
time  to  say  what  they  exactly  were,  and  how  far  they  had 
grown  obsolete  and  been  superseded  by  political  changes. 
The  body  existed,  however,  and  claimed  to  be  consulted  upon 
the  opening  of  Parliament ;  and  it  numbered  many  noblemen 
among  its  members,  the  weight  of  whose  family  names  was  a 
respectable  addition  to  the  more  venerable  but  less  ascertain¬ 
able  claims  of  the  body.  The  representative  of  the  Pale  on 
this  occasion  was  the  Earl  of  Eingal,  a  somewhat  empty-headed 
nobleman,  who,  on  the  strength  of  being  a  leader  or  tool  of  the 
disaffected  party,  assumed  the  man  of  importance,  and  gave 
himself  consequential  airs.  He  waited  in  due  form  and  cere¬ 
mony,  for  and  in  the  behalf  of  the  Pale,  on  the  Lord  Deputy- 
had  heard  a  report  that  there  was  to  be  a  parliament ;  was 
anxious  to  know  the  truth  of  the  matter,  as  in  that  case  their 
Lordships  of  the  Pale  would  prepare  themselves  for  deliberation 
as  to  the  course  to  be  pursued  upon  so  critical  an  occasion  ; 


Lord  Strafford . 


2  i 

their  Lordships  of  the  Pale  were  exceedingly  desirous  to  pro¬ 
mote  the  good  of  their  country,  and  their  Lordships  of  the 
Pale  thought  their  advice  and  counsel  highly  necessary  for  that 
end. — All  this,  says  Strafford,  in  a  grave,  electorate  hind  of  way. 

Strafford  had  a  variety  of  modes  of  answer,  according  to  the 
merits  of  cases  and  individuals  ;  but  for  one  he  had  a  great 
partiality — the  round  answer — a  phrase  of  very  frequent  occur¬ 
rence  in  his  despatches.  The  answer  to  the  representative  of 
the  Pale  was,  it  may  be  readily  supposed,  a  very  round  one 
indeed  :  u  As  he  was  the  mouth  which  came  to  open  for  them  all , 
I  thought  fit  to  close  it  as  soon  as  1  could!'  The  Earl  of  Eingal 
was  simply  informed  that  his  question  was  ignorant,  imperti¬ 
nent,  and  presumptuous,  and  the  claims  of  himself  and  col¬ 
leagues  utterly  contemptible  ;  and  his  Lordship  retired  from 
the  presence-chamber,  himself  “  a  little  out  of  countenance,” 
and  the  Pale  wholly  extinguished. 

The  important  meeting  of  the  Council  board  still  remained. 
Strafford’s  proposition  to  Parliament  was  simply  a  demand  of 
six  subsidies  of  thirty  thousand  each ;  and  he  sent  in  that 
proposition  for  discussion  at  the  board,  purposely  keeping  away 
himself,  that  he  might  elicit  the  more  freely  their  real  senti¬ 
ments,  but  ready  to  interpose  on  the  first  symptom  of  matters 
going  wrong.  That  symptom  very  soon  appeared. 

We  have  mentioned  some  Stewart  mistakes  of  government ; 
the  bargaining  policy,  a  descent  from  high  ground,  and  ipso 
facto  confession  of  weakness,  was  one.  King  James  had  gone 
on,  throughout  his  reign,  buying  and  selling  with  his  Parlia¬ 
ment,  piecing  offer  and  demand  together.  I  will  give  this  if 
you  will  give  that — so  much  prerogative  for  so  many  pounds 
sterling — till  the  royalty  and  the  nation  seemed  at  last  exhi¬ 
biting  themselves  as  two  market-women  at  a  stall,  bating  and 
cheapening  and  cheating  each  other.  The  blunder  still  went 
on  ;  and  the  Council  had  hardly  laid  their  wise  heads  together 
before  they  made  it.  They  spread  the  annual  payment  of  the 
subsidies  over  a  year  and  a  half,  and  then  coupled  even  this 
diminished  demand  with  a  monopoly  and  a  pardon  bill,  as  a 
quid  pro  quo  to  the  popular  party  to  buy  off  the  opposition. 
But  Strafford  was  at  hand,  and  waiting  in  his  cabinet.  Infor- 


22 


Lord  Strafford. 


mation  reached  him  from  Padcliffe  and  Wandesford  of  the 
turn  things  were  taking ;  his  mind  in  a  moment  fastened  on 
the  weak  point,  and  before  the  discussion  could  proceed  fur¬ 
ther,  the  Lord  Deputy  was  in  propria  persona  at  the  head  of 
the  Council  hoard,  giving  his  sage  counsellors  as  rough  a  set 
down  as  ever  set  of  erring  politicians  received.  Did  they 
imagine  that  the  King  would  degrade  himself  by  such  wretched, 
paltry  shifts  ?  No,  no ;  my  great  master,  and  my  gracious 
master,  and  my  royal  master,  and  my  sovereign  master, 
would  act  very  differently.  “  Like  all  other  wise  and  great 
princes,  his  Majesty  expected  to  be  trusted ;  he  would  not 
in  any  case  admit  of  conditions,  or  be  proceeded  withal 
as  by  way  of  bargain  or  contract ;  he  would  be  provided 
for  as  the  head,  and  care  for  his  people  as  members  ;  as 
a  gracious  and  good  king,  but  still  according  to  the  order 
of  reason,  nature,  and  conscience* — himself,  his  people  after¬ 
wards.  They  had  begun  altogether  at  the  wrong  end,  thus 
consulting  what  would  please  the  people  in  a  parliament, 
when  it  would  better  become  a  privy  council  to  consider  what 
might  please  the  King,  and  induce  him  to  call  one.”  Think 
no  more,  he  continues,  of  your  monopoly  bills,  of  your  par¬ 
liament  pardons — “  Poor  shallow  expedients  !  The  King  has 
no  fancy  for  them.  It  is  far  below  my  great  master  to  feed 
his  people  with  shadows  or  empty  pretences.  If  the  noble  and 
real  favours  of  a  gracious  and  wise  King  will  not  carry  it,  he 
will  do  without  your  money,  and  expect  with  patience  the 
honour  that  will  attend  him,  the  repentance  that  will  fall  upon 
yourselves  in  the  conclusion.” 

Pull  of  his  own  majestic  illimitable  idea  of  the  monarchy, 
Strafford  went  on,  and  poured  forth  the  whole  of  his  royalist 
soul  upon  the  assembled  Council.  He  rose  from  eloquence  to 
poetry ;  the  beams  of  light  and  truth  were  invoked  upon  the 
demon  of  suspicion — “that  spirit  of  the  air  that  walked  in 
darkness  between  king  and  people  and  from  the  midst  of  a 
magnificent  labyrinth  of  sentences,  and  an  overshadowing 
cloud  of  imagery,  the  board  was  informed  that  in  case  they 
and  Parliament  refused  to  accept  the  Lord  Deputy’s  view,  he 
should  forthwith  put  himself  at  the  head  of  his  Majesty  s  army , 


Lord  Strafford. 


23 


and  there  persuade  them  fully  that  his  Majesty  had  reason  on 
his  side  ;  the  puissant  Straffordian  oath — on  peril  of  my  life 
and  that  of  my  children — followed  the  threat. 

“  Annuit,  ettotum  nutu  tremefecit  Olympum.”  The  Council 
was  fairly  taken  aback  and  overwhelmed  by  this  portentous 
display  of  energy ;  the  proposition  of  the  six  subsidies  passed 
free  from  all  degrading  appendages,  and  no  wills  or  councils 
intervened  now  between  Strafford  and  his  Parliament. 

One  thing  more  he  thought  proper  to  attend  to,  because 
he  would  lose  no  chance  of  success — the  ceremonial  de¬ 
partment.  Pie  resolved  to  have  the  most  stately  and  gorgeous 
ceremonial  of  a  Parliament  that  had  ever  been  known  in 
Ireland. 

On  Strafford’s  first  arrival  he  found  everything  connected 
with  Court  etiquette  in  the  lowest  possible  state  of  neglect.  A 
melee  of  all  ranks  used  the  viceregal  castle  in  club-house 
fashion,  parading  galleries,  swinging  doors,  and  making  them¬ 
selves  free  everywhere.  Strafford  showed  his  acuteness  in 
making  it  one  of  his  first  acts  to  correct  this  disorder — when 
change  would  be  less  invidious  than  afterwards,  and  would 
come  as  a  simple  order  from  the  King,  without  any  appearance 
of  personal  pride  on  the  Deputy’s  part.  “  I  crave  such  a  direc¬ 
tion  from  his  Majesty,”  he  says,  “  that  they  may  know  it  to 
be  his  pleasure  :  otherwise  I  shall  be  well  content  it  may 
be  spared,  having  in  truth  no  such  vanity  in  myself  as  to  be 
delighted  with  any  of  these  observances.”  Nevertheless  he 
sent,  with  his  letter,  as  accurate  a  table  of  etiquette  for  the 
King’s  approval  as  the  most  rigid  master  of  the  ceremonies 
could  desire.  Noblemen  were  admitted  on  days  of  meeting  to 
the  presence-chamber ;  the  drawing-chamber  was  assigned  to 
the  untitled  class  below  them,  who  were  not  however  allowed 
to  bring  in  their  servants  ;  the  gallery  to  the  members  of  the 
Council.  The  audacity  of  the  gentlemen-ushers,  who  had  been 
in  the  habit  of  following  their  masters  the  Lord  Chancellor 
and  the  Treasurer,  into  the  Lord  Deputy’s  presence,  was  re¬ 
pressed,  and  they  were  enjoined  to  stop  at  the  gallery  door ; 
the  purse-bearer,  who  had  ambitiously  mixed  himself  with  the 
councillors  in  the  gallery,  received  the  same  direction  ;  and 


24 


Lord  Straff  or  a \ 


the  Lord  Chancellor,  it  was  added,  ought  not  to  he  too  proud 
to  carry  his  own  purse  in  the  Lord  Deputy’s  presence. 

Policy  and  feeling  combined  produced  these  arrangements. 
Strafford’s  awful  ideas  of  the  monarchy  coloured  everything 
down  to  a  king’s  little  finger  with  majesty.  If  the  King  wrote 
a  letter,  it  was  his  “sacred  pen”  that  officiated;  if  he  went 
from  one  place  to  another,  it  was  his  “  blessed  journey.”  And 
as  the  representation  and  reflection  of  royalty,  he  regarded 
himself  as  raised  far  above  nobility ;  he  taught  the  proudest 
of  Irish  lords  to  feel  their  “  immense  distance,”  and  hide  their 
diminished  heads  before  the  shadow  of  a  king.  He  had  a 
natural,  even  a  simple  love  of  pomp  and  ceremony,  and,  but 
for  a  strong  intellect,  would  have  been  bombastic ;  as  it  was, 
nobody  was  less  so.  “  I  am  naturally  modest,”  he  says  of  him¬ 
self,  with  real  simplicity,  “  and  extremely  unwilling  to  be  held 
supercilious  and  imperious  among  them” — and  his  social 
habits  formed  a  sufficient  contrast  to  his  haughtiness  as 
Viceroy.  He  was  fond  of  conversation,  and  shone  in  it,  espe¬ 
cially  in  the  entertaining  department ;  and,  whenever  he  could 
spare  the  time,  after  supper  walked  off  his  friends  into  his 
cabinet,  where  he  smoked  and  told  good  stories,  of  which  he 
had  a  copious  supply,  or  at  Christmas-time  played  at  Primero 
and  Mayo,  at  which  he  was  an  adept.  At  his  public  table  he 
was  very  conscientious  in  playing  the  don  on  one  point.  It 
was  always  splendidly  provided,  though  he  partook  but 
sparingly  of  it  himself ;  but  he  allowed  no  toasts ,  except  on 
solemn  days  the  King,  Queen,  and  Prince,  in  order  to  mark 
his  discountenance  of  the  habits  of  drinking  then  universal  in 
Ireland. 

As  the  great  day  of  the  opening  of  Parliament  drew  near, 
vast  pains  were  taken  to  collect  all  the  information  on  the 
ceremonials  which  had  been  observed  on  such  occasions ; 
tables  of  forms  and  precedence  were  ransacked,  solemn  rolls 
and  parchments  reproduced  from  the  dust  of  ages,  and  heraldry, 
with  her  inspiring  insignia  and  mystic  antique  glare,  sum¬ 
moned  to  the  scene.  On  July  14,  1634,  with  the  sound  of 
trumpets  and  wave  of  banners,  a  magnificent  procession  moved 
to  the  Parliament  House,  through  the  streets  of  Dublin,  such 


Lord  Strafford. 


25 


as  Ireland,  it  was  said,  had  never  seen  before — her  whole  ✓ 
aristocracy  ranged  according  to  exact  order  of  rank  and  date  of 
patent — knights  and  squires,  dukes,  earls,  and  barons,  in  their 
robes,  bishops  and  archbishops  in  their  rochets,  privy  councillors 
and  ministers  of  State  with  all  the  badges  of  office.  The  courts  of 
law  were  emptied  of  their  judges  and  serjeants  ;  heralds,  pur¬ 
suivants,  and  troops  filled  up  the  interstices,  and  serjeants-at- 
arms,  with  naked  swords,  flanked ;  the  long  line  wound  up 
with  Strafford  himself,  who  marched  surrounded  with  all  the , 
paraphernalia  of  viceregal  pomp,  Lord  Brabazon  bearing  his 
train,  Lord  Ormond  the  sword,  Lord  Kilinore  the  cap.  The 
procession  halted  at  the  great  entrance  of  St.  Patrick’s,  where 
the  chapter  and  choir  met  them,  and  with  the  Archbishops  of 
Cashel  and  Tuam,  headed  them  into  the  Cathedral,  singing  the 
Te  Deum ,  and  after  service  and  a  sermon  from  the  Primate, 
Strafford  opened  the  session. 

Step  by  step  all  had  succeeded  hitherto,  and  Strafford 
determined  not  to  be  wanting  to  himself  at  the  wind-up  scene. 
Summoning  every  nerve  and  muscle,  and  straining  every  joint, 
for  a  last  effort,  he  threw  down  the  gauntlet,  declared  in  a 
speech  of  unshrinking  swing  and  power  his  full  resolution,  and 
dashed  the  royalty  in  the  face  of  the  Irish  Parliament.  “  And 
albeit,”  he  continues,  after  a  general  sketch  of  affairs, — 

“Albeit  his  Majesty  need  insist  upon  no  other  argument  to 
bow  you  to  his  just  desires,  but  his  own  personal  merit,  and  those 
sovereign  duties  you  owe  him  for  his  justice  and  protection,  in 
comparison  whereof  I  confess  indeed  all  that  can  be  said  is  far 
subordinate,  yet  you  will  admit  me,  that  sees  how  much  the  whole 
frame  of  this  commonwealth,  by  a  close  consent  of  parts,  is  like  to 
settle  or  suffer  with  the  good  or  bad  success  of  this  present  meet¬ 
ing,  as  a  person  that  hath  no  end  but  uprightly  to  dispense  my 
master’s  justice  amongst  you,  without  acceptance  of  persons ;  nor 
expects,  hopes  for  no  other  reward,  than  through  the  monuments 
and  testimonies  I  trust  I  shall  be  able  to  leave  behind  me,  to  he 
acknowledged  when  I  am  gone,  by  you  and  your  children,  a  true 
lover  of  your  country, — give  me  leave,  I  say,  as  a  person  thus 
qualified,  thus  affected,  to  tell  you  plainly,  that  if  you  do  not  per¬ 
fectly  and  cheerfully  conform  yourselves  to  fulfil  his  Majesty’s 
desires,  you  render  yourselves  to  all  equal  minds  the  most  unwise, 
the  most  unthankful,  the  most  unpardonable  people  in  the  world. 


26  Lord  Strafford . 

“  For  lay  your  hands  upon  your  hearts,  and  tell  me  if  ever  the 
desires  of  a  mighty  and  powerful  king  were  so  moderate,  so 
modest, — taking,  asking  nothing  for  himself,  but  all  for  you.  His 
Majesty  hath  contracted  a  vast  debt  merely  in  the  service  of  this 
crown,  and  now  wishes  you  to  ease  him  of  the  burden.  His 
Majesty  issueth  all  he  hath  willingly  for  your  protection  and  safety 
— nay,  hath  entered  into  a  new  charge  of  seven  thousand  pounds 
a  year  for  safeguarding  your  coast.  His  Majesty  and  his  royal 
father  have  had  but  one  subsidy  from  you,  where  England  hath 
given  them  thirty  subsidies  ;  and  can  you  be  so  indulgent  to  your¬ 
selves  as  to  be  persuaded  you  must  ever  be  exempt  %  If  it  should 
be  so,  certainly  the  stars  were  more  propitious  to  you  than  to  any 
other  conquered  nation  under  heaven.  No,  no  ;  let  no  such 
narrow,  inward  considerations  possess  you,  but  roundly  and  cheer¬ 
fully  apply  yourselves  to  the  contentment  of  his  Majesty  after  your 
long  peace.  .  .  . 

“  Suffer  no  poor  suspicions  or  jealousies  to  vitiate  your  judg¬ 
ment.  Take  heed  of  private  meetings  and  consults  in  your 
chambers.  Here  is  the  proper  place.  His  Majesty  expects  not  to 
find  you  muttering  and  mutinying  in  corners.  I  am  commanded 
to  carry  a  wakeful  eye  over  these  private  and  secret  conventicles  ; 
therefore  it  behoves  you  to  look  to  it.  .  .  . 

“  Finally/’  he  concludes,  “  I  wish  you  a  right  judgment  in  all 
things,  yet  let  me  not  prove  a  Cassandra  among  you — to  speak 
truth,  and  not  be  believed.  However,  speak  truth  I  will,  were  I 
to  become  your  enemy  for  it.  Remember,  therefore,  that  I  tell 
you,  you  may  easily  make  or  mar  this  Parliament.  If  you  proceed 
with  respect,  without  laying  clogs  or  conditions  upon  the  King,  as 
wise  men  and  good  subjects  ought  to  do,  you  shall  infallibly  set 
up  this  Parliament  eminent  to  posterity,  as  the  very  basis  and 
foundation  of  the  greatest  happiness  and  prosperity  that  ever  befell 
this  nation.  But  if  you  meet  a  great  King  with  narrow  circum¬ 
scribed  hearts,  if  you  will  needs  be  wise  and  cautious  above  the 
moon,  remember  again,  I  tell  you,  you  shall  never  be  able  to  cast  your 
mists  before  the  eyes  of  a  discerning  King ;  you  shall  be  found 
out ;  your  sons  shall  wish  they  had  been  the  children  of  more  believ¬ 
ing  parents  ;  and  in  a  time  when  you  look  not  for  it,  when  it  shall 
be  too  late  for  you  to  help,  the  sad  repentance  of  an  unadvised 
breach  shall  be  yours — lasting  honour  shall  be  my  master’s.” 

The  speech,  delivered  with  rude  fiery  vehemence  of  action 
and  tremendous  force  of  lungs,  fairly  overcame  the  House. 
Without  staying  to  balance  arguments  or  examine  motives, 
they  were  thoroughly  taken  aback  and  surprised  by  a  voice 


Lord  Strafford. 


2  7 


which  made  their  ears  ring  again,  and  the  old  walls  re- 

0 

verberate,  and  they  instinctively  reasoned  that  a  man  who 
had  such  lungs  at  such  a  time  was  not  to  be  trifled  with.  No 
barbarian  leader  indeed,  Thracian  or  Caucasian,  could  have  hit 
upon  a  more  aboriginal  theory  of  power,  a  nearer  approach  to 
elemental  government,  before  chaos  was  reduced  to  order. 
And  the  Irish  lords,  descendants  of  the  chieftains,  staring  in 
mute  wonder  at  their  magnificent  Norman  Viceroy — one  man 
singly  confronting  and  beating  a1  nation — was  indeed  a  scene 
of  old  Plantagenet  fire,  a  wild  autumnal  lighting  up  of  the 
monarchy  before  its  sun  set.  The  six  subsidies,  a  larger  sup¬ 
ply  than  an  Irish  Parliament  had  ever  given,  were  passed 
whole,  without  opposition. 

“  My  lords  and  gentlemen  ”  would  not  have  been  extremely 
pleased  could  they  have  overlooked  Strafford’s  shoulder,  as  he 
penned  a  paragraph  to  Laud  shortly  after  :  “Well  spoken  it 
is,  good  or  bad.  I  cannot  tell  whether  ;  but  whatever  it  was, 
I  spake  it  not  betwixt  my  teeth,  but  so  loud  and  heartily  that 
I  protest  unto  you  I  was  faint  withal  at  the  time ,  and  the 
worse  for  it  for  two  or  three  days  after.  It  makes  no  matter  ; 
for  this  way  I  was  assured  they  should  have  sound  at  least, 
with  how  little  weight  soever  it  should  be  attended.  And 
the  success  was  answerable ;  for  had  it  been  low  and  mildly 
delivered,  I  might  perchance  have  gotten  from  them,  ‘  It  was 
pretty  well,’  whereas  this  way  filling  one  of  their  senses  with 
noise,  and  amusing  the  rest  with  earnestness  and  vehemence, 
they  swear  (yet  forgive  them,  they  know  not  what  they  say) 
it  was  the  best  spoken  they  ever  heard  in  their  lives.  Let 
Cottington  crack  me  that  nut  now.” 

The  last  allusion  carries  a  train  of  melancholy  with  it. 
The  height  of  Strafford’s  success  was  the  moment  which 
brought  peering  from  its  hole  that  Court  envy  which  pursued 
him  to  his  dying  day.  Even  now  the  canker  had  begun ;  a 
too  sensitive  mind,  a  body  worn  by  illness,  depressed  though 
they  did  not  sour  him.  He  felt  himself  oXiyo^povLos,  and 
talked  of  old  age  and  grey  hairs  :  “  In  good  earnest,  I  should 
wax  exceeding  melancholy  were  it  not  for  two  little  girls  that 
come  now  and  then  to  play  with  me.” 

The  following  December  witnessed  another  equally  success- 


28 


Lord  Strafford. 


ful  session  of  Parliament ;  and  simultaneously  with  it,  an 
Irish  Convocation  met  for  the  discussion  of  a  most  funda¬ 
mental  point,  which  called  all  Strafford’s  zeal  and  activity  as  a 
Churchman  into  requisition. 

The  Church  had  been  the  very  first  and  earliest  care  of  the 
Lord  Deputy  on  his  entrance  into  office.  It  needed  reform  full 
as  much  as  the  State,  and  it  appealed  more  forcibly,  because 
more  directly,  to  his  religion.  Strafford’s  was  essentially  a 
religious  mind ;  he  regarded  himself  as  on  a  mission  for  the 
cause  of  good  against  evil,  as  all  heroic  minds  since  the  founda¬ 
tion  of  the  world  have  done,  as  even  in  our  own  day,  with  all 
his  miserable  alloy,  did  Nelson  feel  in  his  battles  with  an 
atheistical  power. 

It  was  the  fight  of  the  Church  of  England  against  Puri¬ 
tanism — a  complex  fight.  The  Puritan  was  a  compound  of 
the  democrat  and  the  fanatic,  his  mind  the  visionary  seat  of  a 
religious  republic,  and  the  scene  of  a  grotesque  imagery  of 
drum  and  pulpit,  sword  and  Genevan  gown.  He  looked  onward 
through  fields  of  blood  to  the  battle  of  Armageddon,  the  new 
empire  of  the  “  saints,”  and  crown  and  mitre  trampled  under 
foot.  The  Eoyalist  had  as  deeply-felt  a  theory,  on  the  other 
side,  of  Church  and  King.  The  hierarchical  system,  which  had 
co-existed  with  the  nation  from  the  first,  was  embraced  in  his 
idea  of  the  national  life  ;  and  to  puritanise  the  Church  in¬ 
volved  a  sort  of  death  or  metempsychosis  of  the  nation.  A 
theory,  real  as  the  solid  earth  in  its  day,  now  past.  Alas  ! 
one  age  has  a  mode  of  linking  and  associating  which  another 
has  not,  and  time  after  time  the  cubical  verity,  the  primordial 
ideal  atom,  betrays  its  joining  and  comes  undone.  The  two 
sides  were  on  the  eve  of  gathering  their  embattled  fronts  : 
Strafford,  imaginative,  intense,  in  the  Eoyalist  view  seemed 
destined  and  marked  out  for  the  antagonist  of  the  fighting 
visionary  on  his  way  to  Armageddon,  and  his  Irish  mission 
bound  him  both  to  purge  a  puritanising  and  to  fortify  a 
despoiled  Church  for  the  approaching  struggle.  But  he  had, 
moreover,  on  this  subject  an  intimate  friend  and  guide,  to 
whom  he  owed  the  strength  of  his  convictions,  and  whose 
suggestions  wholly  ruled  him. 


Lord  Strafford. 


29 


Amici  the  crowd  of  intriguing,  bustling,  short-headed  states¬ 
men  that  thronged  the  Court  of  the  Stewarts,  Strafford  had 
observed  one  man  with  a  view — who  had  taken  his  line,  and  who 
kept  to  it  with  an  unwearying  and  dogged  pertinacity,  from 
which  no  human  power  could  divert  him.  A  continual  resi¬ 
dent  at  Court  through  a  most  busy  period,  Archbishop  Laud 
had  maintained,  amidst  the  business  levities  and  distractions 
of  such  an  atmosphere,  one  grave  uniform  imperturbable  course, 
which  only  waited  now  for  Buckingham’s  death  to  raise  him, 
a  simple  King’s  chaplain  to  begin  with,  to  the  Premiership. 
Strafford’s  observations  at  the  Star  Chamber  had  impressed 
him  with  a  vast  respect  for  the  future  Primate ;  on  the  other 
hand,  Laud’s  critical  and  experienced  eye  observed  in  his 
admirer  the  statesman  whom  it  was  of  the  utmost  consequence 
to  engage  for  the  Church’s  cause.  It  was  his  policy  to  lay 
hold  of  and  indoctrinate  such  men ;  he  had  gained  an  influence 
even  over  the  light-hearted  Buckingham  ;  and  now  that  more 
difficult  times  were  approaching,  he  was  not  sorry  to  see 
within  his  reach  a  politician  of  a  new  and  more  serious  school. 
The  connection  thus  begun  on  public  grounds  cemented  into 
the  closest  and  tenderest  private  friendship.  Though  most 
different  men — it  is  almost  absurd  to  compare  them — they 
had  many  points  in  common  :  the  same  union  of  an  irritable 
and  sensitive  with  a  most  affectionate  temper ;  the  same 
untiring  patience,  the  same  indomitable  courage.  The  subtle 
Hamilton  well  described  their  two  kinds  of  courage,  when,  on 
the  meeting  of  Charles’s  last  Parliament,  he  warned  the  King 
of  the  approaching  fate  of  his  two  ministers,  because  the  “one 
would  be  too  great  to  fear,  and  the  other  too  bold  to  fly.”  The 
feeling  of  a  common  cause  and  common  danger  strengthened 
their  intimacy  as  time  went  on  :  there  is  no  basis  for  private 
friendship  like  the  public  one — like  union  in  a  great  cause, 
where  there  are  no  differences  of  opinion  about  it ;  and  Laud 
and  Strafford  had  none.  On  all  the  questions  that  came  on 
in  Church  and  State  they  felt  absolutely  alike,  and  reflected 
like  two  mirrors  each  other’s  views.  Higher  feelings  mingled 
with  those  of  affection.  The  mind  of  Strafford,  naturally 
formed  for  reverence,  honoured  the  Church  in  the  person  of 


Lord  Strafford. 


30 

its  Primate :  the  Archbishop's  “  Salutem  in  Christo  ”  met  its 
response  ;  and  “  your  son ,”  and  “  my  ghostly  father”  and  “  the 
glory  of  that  obedience  which  I  have  set  apart  for  you,”  expressed 
the  deeper  regard  of  the  Churchman  towards  his  spiritual 
superior.  Laud  accepted  the  submission  with  a  smile.  “Well, 
you  have  given  me  the  freedom ;  I  will  make  use  of  it ;  and 
as  long  as  you  shall  retain  the  ohedienoe  of  a  son,  I  will  take 
upon  me  to  he  your  ghostly  father.  If,  therefore,  from  hence¬ 
forward  I  take  upon  me  to  command,  lay  down  your  sword  for 
the  time,  and  know  your  duty.” 

The  Irish  Church  campaign  opens  with  a  series  of  irregular 
encounters  between  Strafford,  with  Laud  at  his  hack,  and  a 
variety  of  earls,  barons,  knights,  bishops,  .archbishops,  deans, 
and  dignitaries  of  all  kinds,  lay  and  ecclesiastical,  to  get  back 
sundry  Church  spoils  into  their  possession.  There  is  a  mixture 
of  seriousness  and  fun  in  the  correspondence  of  the  two  on 
these  opening  transactions ;  both  in  high  spirits  at  the  new 
prospect  in  Church  and  State,  and  Strafford  getting  his  hand 
in,  and  taking  no  small  pleasure  in  fhe  exercise.  He  had  in 
a  remarkable  degree  what  Bishop  Butler  calls  “indignation  at 
public  vice  ;  ”  a  case  of  oppression  roused  all  the  knight-errant 
in  his  breast ;  he  was  famed  in  his -county  as  the  protector  and 
avenger  of  the  poorer  class,  and  the  poor  Irish  Church,  appeal- 
4  ing  to  his  justice  from  the  extortion  and  sacrilege  of  the  great, 
was  just  the  object  to  rouse  him.  “I  foresee,”  he  says  of 
Church  spoliation,  “this  is  so  universal  a  disease,  that  I  shall 
incur  a  number  of  men’s  displeasures  of  the  best  rank  among 
them.  But  were  I  not  better  lose  these  for  God  Almighty’s 
sake  than  lose  Him  for  theirs  ?  So  you  see  I  shall  quickly 
have  as  few  friends  as  may  be.”  Thus  excited,  the  Primate 
and  Lord  Deputy  begin  hallooing  and  answering  one  another 
across  the  Channel,  like  voice  and  echo — Arcades  ambo  et 
cantare  pares,  et  respondere  parati.  Backwards  and  forwards 
goes  the  watchword  “  Thorough ,”  the  symbol  of  political  force 
and  vigour — a  heathen  reader  would  imagine  it  some  Ossianic 
deity  from  its  extraordinary  personality ;  and  in  rapid  suc¬ 
cession  pass  and  repass  the  names  of  “  my  Lord  Cork  ”  and 
“  my  Lord  Antrim,”  “  my  Lord  Clanricard  ”  and  “  Sir  Daniel 


Lord  Strafford. 


31 

O’Brien,”  and  “Sir  Henry  Lynch,”  and  then  my  lords  the 
bishops,  his  grace  of  Cashel,  their  lordships  of  Down,  Cork, 
Waterford,  Killala.  “  The  Church  cormorants  !  ”  says  Laud  ;  4 
“  they  are  fed  so  full  upon  it  that  they  are  fallen  into  a  fever.” 

“  Have  at  the  ravens”  replies  Strafford ;  “  if  I  spare  a  man  of 
them ,  let  no  man  ever  spare  me  ”  “  Your  lordship  is  a  good 

physician,”  writes  back  Laud ;  “  no  physic  better  than  a 
vomit,  if  given  in  time,  and  you  have  taken  a  judicious  course 
to  administer  one  so  early  to  my  Lord  of  Cork.  J oin  Sir  T. 

Fitz  Edmonds  to  the  rest  of  his  fellows,  and  make  him  vomit 
up  Cloyne.”  “  I  shall  trounce  a  bishop  or  two  in  the  Castle 
Chamber,”  writes  Strafford  ;  “  the  Bishop  of  Killala — I 

warmed  his  old  sides, — the  Bishop  of  Down,  the  Dean  of 
Londonderry,  etc.  etc.”  “’Twill  he  a  hrave  example,”  is  Laud’s 
reply ;  “  he  deserves  it  plentifully.”  “  I  have  a  nice  set  of 
charges  against  a  friend  of  yaurs,  a  St.  John’s  man,”  writes 
Strafford,  and  is  answered,  “  If  but  half  of  them  are  true, 
make  an  example  of  him :  keep  the  bishops  from  their 
sacrilegious  alienations ;  turn  the  chief  offenders  out  of  their 
bishoprics ;  ’twill  do  more  good  to  Ireland  than  anything  that 
hath  been  there  these  twenty  years.”  “  Go  on,”  wrote  the 
Primate  in  the  midst  of  these  fights  with  the  nobility  and 
hierarchy  (Strafford’s  sympathy  unbosomed  all  the  fire  in  his 
breast),- — “  Go  on,  my  Lord  ;  I  must  needs  say  this  is  thorough 
indeed ;  you  have  deciphered  my  note  well — thorough  and 
thorough.  Oh  that  I  were  where  I  might  do  so  too  !  go  on  a 
God’s  name.”  The  “Lady  Mora,”  the  personification  of  the 
half-and-half  moderate  system  on  which  the  English  Cabinet 
went,  fares  but  ill :  “  The  Lady  Mora  as  heavy  as  lead.”  “  My 
lady  commends  her  to  you,  and  would  make  more  haste,  but 
stays  to  accommodate  private  ends.”  And  then  another 
“  thorough  and  thorough,”  re-echoed  by  a  “  thorough  and 
throughout,”  assures  the  two  correspondents  of  their  mutual 
courage  and  fidelity. 

By  dint  of  a  continued  fight  with  the  aristocracy,  Strafford 
actually  contrived  during  his  administration  to  increase  the 
property  of  the  Church  thirty  thousand  a  year — an  incredible 
sum  for  that  day.  Other  more  important  cares  however 


Lord  Strafford. 


accompanied  the  pecuniary  one.  The  churches  were  in  shame¬ 
ful  repair ;  the  service  in  many  omitted  altogether,  and  in 
none  performed  creditably ;  the  surplice  and  other  externals 
getting  into  general  disuse.  The  clergy  were  a  disorderly  class, 
grossly  ignorant,  and  steeped  in  puritanical  prejudices.  The 
miserable  poverty  of  benefices  excuses  in  a  measure  their  in¬ 
ordinate  pluralities :  sixteen  livings  were  hardly  felt  by  the 
Archbishop  of  Cashel,  and  it  was  reckoned  that  in  some  cases 
six  hardly  furnished  the  parochial  priest  with  clothes.  Laud 
consented  to  put  off  a  stringent  law  against  this  abuse,  on  the 
assurance  of  Strafford  that  it  was  simply  impossible  to  enforce 
it  as  things  were.  “  Indeed,  my  Lord,”  replies  the  Primate, 
excusing  himself,  “  I  knew  it  was  bad,  very  bad  in  Ireland,  but 
that  it  was  so  stark  naught  I  did  not  believe.  Stay  the  time 
you  must.” 

Under  Strafford’s  administration  these  corruptions  met  an 
uu  sparing  and  vigorous  correction.  Pluralities,  though  they 
could  not  be  taken  away,  were  restrained ;  the  introduction  of 
English  scholars  gave  a  move  to  learning ;  Laud,  much  against 
his  will  made  Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Dublin,  presided 
over  an  improved  system  of  clerical  education  ;  and  a  party  of 
theologians,  of  which  Bramhall  was  the  head,  occupied  itself 
zealously  in  the  dissemination  of  High  Church  views.  Vestments 
and  church  externals  were  enforced,  the  fabrics  repaired,  and 
Strafford  had  even  determined  on  King’s  letters-patent  for 
rebuilding  all  the  cathedrals  in  Ireland. 

A  trivial  anecdote  shows  the  spirit  of  his  restorations.  The 
Earl  of  Cork  had  three  years  before  erected  a  large  family 
monument  at  the  very  east  end  of  St.  Patrick’s,  in  the  absence 
of  the  altar,  which  in  those  Puritan  times  had  been  .made  to 
travel  down  toward  the  body  of  the  church.  As  it  entirely 
blocked  up  all  return  of  the  altar,  Strafford,  at  Laud’s  sugges¬ 
tion,  insisted  on  its  removal  to  some  other  place.  The  Earl  of 
Cork  felt  his  family  pride  offended,  and  did  not  understand 
these  new  ecclesiastical  pretensions.  He  urged  that  the 
chapter  had  consented  to  its  erection,  and  that  three  years  had 
passed  without  any  objection  being  made  ;  and  lastly,  appealed 
to  Laud’s  consideration  on  the  ground  of  his  own  good  character 


Lord  Strafford. 


33 


and  charities.  Laud,  in  reply,  was  happy  to  hear  that  he  spent 
the  money  he  had  robbed  the  Church  of  so  well,  but  insisted 
on  the  removal  of  the  monument.  The  Earl  wrote  up  to  his 
friends  in  the  Administration,  told  the  Lord  Keeper  that  the 
tomb  contained  “  the  bones  of  a  Weston,”  and,  after  stirring 
up  all  his  interest,  appealed  to  the  King  in  council.  Charles 
refused  to  interpose ;  and  the  Earl,  much  to  Strafford’s  amuse¬ 
ment,  transported  his  monument  in  packages  out  of  the  church, 
in  too  high  dudgeon  to  remove  it  to  any  other  part  of  the 
building.  “  The  Earl  of  Cork’s  tomb  is  now  quite  removed,” 
he  tells  Laud  ;  “  how  he  means  to  dispose  of  it  I  know  not :  but 
up  it  is  put  in  boxes,  as  if  it  were  marchpanes  and  banqueting 
stuffs  going  down  to  the  christening  of  my  young  master  in 
the  country.  The  wall  is  closed  again,  and  as  soon  as  it  is  dry 
it  shall  be  decently  adorned.”  It  was  natural  that  the  Earl  of 
Cork  should  complain  when  even  Archbishop  Usher  allowed 
his  chapel  at  Drogheda  to  remain  without  an  altar.  Strafford, 
on  visiting  this  place,  in  the  course  of  his  peregrinations 
through  Ireland,  expressed  his  disgust  at  the  sight  of  such  an 
irregularity  in  an  archiepiscopal  chapel,  and  communicated 
the  fact  to  Laud — “  no  bowing  there ,  I  warrant  you.” 

But  the  root  of  the  disorder  under  which  the  Irish  Church 
laboured  lay  deeper  than  the  above  reforms  could  touch  :  she 
had  all  along  an  incubus  upon  her  most  vital  part.  The 
Articles  of  Lambeth,  an  exhibition  of  pure  unmitigated  Calvin¬ 
ism,  and  a  production  of  an  era  of  the  English  Church  when 
the  views  of  the  foreign  reformers  still  triumphed  over  the 
greater  part  of  our  episcopate,  formed  her  confession  of  faith. 
Such  a  creed  poisoned  the  rjOos  of  the  Church  at  the  very 
source,  and  was  a  puritanising  element  in  her  constitution, 
which  would  infallibly  absorb  and  conquer  her  if  not  extracted 
in  time.  It  was  necessary  to  reform  the  doctrine  of  the  Irish 
Church,  if  any  other  reforms  were  to  be  availing  ;  and  it  was 
determined  accordingly  to  abolish  the  Lambeth  Confession,  and 
impose  the  English  Articles  in  its  place. 

The  Primate  Usher  was  taken  into  the  plan.  He  was  a 
divine  of  a  mediocre  school,  half-Puritan,  half- Churchman,  and 
felt  secretly  against  the  change ;  but  overawed  by  Laud’s  and 
M.E.-I.]  c 


34 


Lord  Strafford. 


Strafford’s  determination,  consented  to  be  the  instrument  of 
carrying  it.  JSTot  a  hint  was  then  allowed  to  escape  to  awaken 
the  alarm  of  the  clergy,  and  the  design  only  transpired  on  the 
day  of  Convocation. 

Convocation  met,  and  everything  went  wrong  :  Usher  was 
deficient  either  in  heart  or  tact,  and  the  Irish  clergy  were  not 
to  be  surprised.  A  committee  of  the  lower  house  entered  the 
Lambeth  Articles  in  their  book,  to  be  imposed  under  anathema. 
Strafford,  wholly  occupied  with  the  work  of  an  agitating  session, 
had  not  had  a  moment  to  spare  for  Convocation,  which  he 
trusted  to  Usher  entirely,  and  only  heard  of  the  failure  of  the 
scheme  when  it  appeared  too  late  to  interfere.  It  was  not,  how¬ 
ever,  too  late  for  him  :  in  high  wrath  he  sent  instantaneously 
for  the  chairman  of  the  committee,  Dean  Andrewes,  “  that 
reverend  clerk,”  and  proceeded  to  rate  him  mercilessly.  “  I  told 
him  certainly  not  a  Dean  of  Limerick,  but  an  Ananias  had  sat 
in  the  chair  of  that  committee  :  however  sure  I  was  Ananias 
had  been  there  in  spirit,  if  not  in  the  body,  with  all  the 
fraternities  and  conventicles  of  Amsterdam  ;  and  that  I  was 
ashamed  and  scandalised  at  the  proceeding  above  measure.” 
The  whole  action  of  the  committee  was  suspended,  Andrewes 
marched  off  home  and  forbidden  to  communicate  with  them, 
and  the  members  of  the  committee  and  several  of  the  bishops 
peremptorily  summoned  to  the  castle  the  next  morning,  when 
Strafford  renewed  his  rebuke.  “  I  publicly  told  them  how 
unlike  clergymen  that  ought  canonical  obedience  to  their 
superiors,  they  had  proceeded  in  their  committee  ;  how  unheard 
a  part  it  was  for  a  few  petty  clerks  to  presume  to  make  articles 
of  faith  without  the  privity  or  consent  of  State  or  bishop ; 
what  a  spirit  of  Brownism  and  contradiction  I  observed  in 
their  deliberandums,  as  if  they  purposed  at  once  to  take  all 
government  and  order  forth  of  the  Church.  But  these  heady 
arrogant  courses,  they  must  know,  I  was  not  to  endure ;  nor  if 
they  were  disposed  to  be  frantic  in  this  dead  and  cold  season 
of  the  year  would  I  suffer  them  to  be  mad  in  Convocation  or 
in  their  pulpits.”  In  fine,  the  English  Articles  were  com¬ 
manded  to  be  put  again,  yes  or  no,  to  Convocation  ;  no  delibera¬ 
tion  ;  not  a  word  allowed  ;  simply  yes  or  no.  The  committee 


Lord  Strafford. 


35 


were  indignant,  and  murmurs  escaped  from  a  free  synod ; 
Strafford  was  threatened  with  resistance,  and  Usher  in  alarm 
came  to  tell  him  the  measure  could  not  pass  against  so  strong 
a  feeling.  Strafford '  replied  that  he  knew  how  to  manage 
such  matters  better  than  Usher ;  in  short,  the  question  of  the 
Articles  was  put,  and  carried  unanimously. 

“  There  is  nothing  I  am  liher  to  hear  of  than  this”  is  Straf¬ 
ford’s  pithy  comment  to  Laud  upon  what  he  had  done.  “  I 
am  not  ignorant  that  my  stirring  herein  will  be  strangely 
reported  and  censured  on  that  side ;  and  how  I  shall  be  able 
to  sustain  myself  against  your  Prynnes,  Pyms,  and  Bens,  with 
the  rest  of  that  generation  of  odd  names  and  natures,  the  Lord 
knows.  Sure  I  am,  I  have  gone  herein  with  an  upright  heart, 
to  prevent  a  breach,  seeming  at  least,  between  the  Churches  of 
England  and  Ireland.  Yet  in  regard  I  have  been  acting  out  of 
my  sphere,  I  beseech  your  lordship  to  take  me  so  far  into  your 
care,  as  that  you  procure  me  a  letter  from  his  Majesty,  either 
of  allowance  of  what  I  have  done,  or  of  my  absolution,  if  I  have 
gone  too  far.  If  it  stand  with  your  mind  that  the  Articles  of 
Ireland  he  hy  a  canon  enjoined  to  he  received,  I  will  undertake 
they  shall  he  more  thankful  unto  you  for  them  upon  their  next 
than  they  ivould  have  been  this  meeting  of  Convocation .”  Straf¬ 
ford  was  not  out  in  his  apprehensions  ;  the  act  was  a  strong 
and  decided  blow  to  Puritanism,  and  armed  all  the  prejudices 
of  the  age  against  him. 

The  question  of  doctrine  carried,  that  of  discipline  naturally 
followed.  A  new  body  of  canons  was  carried  at  the  same 
time  with  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  which  on  some  points  spoke 
out  more  strongly  than  the  canons  of  the  English  Church ; 
among  others,  on  the  practice  of  confession.  The  leaven  soon 
began  to  work,  and  the  Irish  Church  to  show  symptoms  of 
alarm.  Croxton,  Strafford’s  chaplain,  one  of  the  High -Church 
circle  alluded  to  above,  took  an  open,  perhaps  an  indiscreet  and 
too  early,  advantage  of  it.  The  Primate  Usher  and  various 
dignitaries  looked  black ;  Laud  himself  was  afraid  that  the 
zealous  chaplain  had  rather  exceeded  his  commission,  and  acted 
prematurely,  and  was  making  up  his  mind  to  the  necessity  of 
allowing  him  to  be  snubbed,  when  Strafford,  declaring  in 


36 


Lord  Strafford ’ 


favour  of  auricular  confession  as  the  doctrine  of  the  Church, 
and  the  practice  of  her  good  and  holy  men,  threw  his  shield 
over  him.  Though  sympathising,  however,  with  the  more 
spiritual  and  internal  department  of  discipline,  he  naturally 
took  the  external  to  come  more  under  his  province.  To  enforce 
religious  unity  by  Church  discipline  and  to  invigorate  Church 
discipline  by  the  secular  arm  was  his  maxim — with  one  excep¬ 
tion,  however,  in  which  his  gentleness  and  moderation  con¬ 
trasts  somewhat  singularly  with  the  line  of  the  popular  party 
of  that  day.  Even  his  strong  views  of  conformity  held  hack 
from  the  notion  of  forcing  the  Irish  Church  in  its  then  state 
upon  the  Eornan  Catholics  :  he  even  relieved  them  from  the 
tax  of  twelvepence  per  head  which  had  been  levied  upon 
recusants.  Let  us  reform  our  own  Church  first,  was  his  dictum, 
and  then  push  it— hut  do  not  oblige  men  to  change  their 
religious  system  before  you  have  a  good  one  to  offer  in  its  place. 
He  was  not  so  considerate  to  the  Presbyterians,  with  whom  he 
kept  up  a  constant  fight  on  the  subject  of  uniformity.  There 
were  not  many  bishops  who  acted  with  him,  hut  those  who  did 
were  warmly  supported  :  the  authority  of  the  bishops’  courts 
was  upheld,  even  in  their  contests  with  men  of  station,  and 
their  excommunications  hacked  with  sheriffs’  writs.  But  these 
efforts  required  systematising  and  putting  on  a  firmer  basis, 
and  Strafford  entertained  a  project  for  invigorating  Church 
authority  in  Ireland,  which,  had  there  been  time  to  realise  it, 
would  have  made  a  most  sensible  change  in  the  position  of  the 
Church  in  that  country. 

Pure  Church  authority,  exercised  by  the  Church  in  her  own 
name,  and  by  her  own  judges,  independent  of  all  State  alloy, 
there  was  none  then,  as  there  has  been  none  since.  A  great 
revolution  of  opinion  had  subjected  and  tied  the  Church  to 
State  interference,  and  the  only  question  with  High- Churchmen 
for  that  time,  as  practical  reformers,  was,  how  to  get  the  State 
on  the  side  of  the  Church, — an  end  which  seemed  most  likely 
to  be  accomplished  by  throwing  their  whole  weight  into  that 
side  of  the  scale,  that  power  in  the  State,  which  favoured  her 
pretensions.  The  common  law  had  inherited  a  strong  Erastian 
bias  from  the  precedents  of  the  Eeformation  era,  which  put  it 


Lord  Strafford. 


37 


in  opposition  to  such  claims  ;  the  law  courts  persisted  in  re¬ 
vising  and  thwarting  the  sentences  of  the  courts  ecclesiastical, 
and  a  deadly  feud  between  the  common  lawyers  and  the 
ecclesiastics  was  the  result.  “  The  Church/’  said  Laud,  com¬ 
plaining  bitterly  of  their  interference,  “  is  so  bound  up  in  the 
forms  of  the  common  law,  that  it  is  not  possible  for  me  or  for 
any  man  to  do  that  good  which  he  would  or  is  bound  to  do. 
Lor  your  lordship  (Strafford)  sees,  no  man  clearer,  that  they 
who  have  gotten  so  much  power  in  and  over  the  Church  will 
not  let  go  their  hold ;  they  have  indeed  fangs  with  a  witness, 
whatsoever  I  was  once  said  in  a  passion  to  have.”  The 
royalty  was  the  Church’s  refuge  from  the  common  law  and  the 
Erastian  spirit  of  the  day.  In  the  High  Commission  Court 
and  Star-Chamber  she  spoke  through  the  Prince’s  mouth,  and, 
we  may  add,  with  effect ;  she  made  herself  odious  by  her  bold 
rebukes  of  the  vices  of  the  higher  classes.  Whatever  persons 
may  say,  those  courts,  mixed  and  anomalous  as  they  were, 
asserted  an  ecclesiastical  discipline  which  really  told ;  we  wish 
we  could  say  the  same  of  any  other  ecclesiastical  tribunal 
since  the  Reformation.  The  Church’s  line  thus  necessarily 
set  up  the  Royalty  versus  the  Common  Law ;  and  Strafford 
sympathised  entirely  with  it.  “  I  know  no  reason,”  he  tells 
Laud,  “  but  you  may  as  well  rule  the  common  lawyers  in 
England,  as  I  poor  beagle  do  here  ;  and  yet  that  I  do  and  will 
do  in  all  that  concerns  my  master  at  the  peril  of  my  head.  I 
am  confident  that  the  King  being  pleased  to  set  himself  in  this 
business  is  able  by  his  wisdom  and  ministers  to  carry  any  just 
and  honourable  action  through  all  imaginable  opposition,  for 
real  there  can  be  none ;  that  to  start  aside  for  such  panic  fears, 
fantastic  apparitions  as  a  Prynne  or  an  Elliot  shall  set  up, 
were  the  meanest  folly  in  the  whole  world  ;  that  the  debts  of 
the  Crown  being  taken  off,  you  may  govern  as  you  please — 
and  that  it  is  a  dowmright  joeccatum  ex  te  Israel  as  ever  was 
if  this  be  not  effected  with  speed  and  ease.”  The  result  of 
such  views  was  a  resolution  to  establish  a  High  Commission 
Court  in  Dublin,  to  exercise  supreme  authority  in  Irish 
ecclesiastical  matters.  It  was  never  fulfilled,  probably  be¬ 
cause  he  thought  he  could  for  the  present  act  quite  as  advan- 


38 


Lord  Strafford. 


tageously  for  the  Irish  Church  by  himself ;  and  it  simply 
remains  a  record  of  his  intention,  which  we  want  in  order  to 
complete  consistently  the  plan  of  his  government. 

Church  and  State  had  now  taken  a  fresh  start ;  the  Church 
had  risen  a  great  step  above  Puritanism  within  and  oppression 
without ;  the  monarchy  had  faced — nay,  out-faced — the  nation. 
What  a  strong  arm  had  begun  a  strong  arm  must  carry 
through,  and  the  cause  which  rested  upon  the  lofty  but  in¬ 
tangible  support  of  a  commanding  mind  must  be  kept  up  by 
the  same  influence,  ever  advancing,  never  flagging.  With 
something  of  the  spirit  of  that  exemplar  of  chivalry,  cited  by 
Don  Quixote,  who  ran  tilt  singly  at  an  army  of  twenty  thou¬ 
sand  Saracens,  or  of  the  Kunic  demigod  who  annually  hacked 
the  Jotuns  or  Giants  in  their  winter  quarters,  Strafford  proceeded 
to  cut  his  way  through  the  proud  aristocracy  of  Ireland. 

A  grand  project  for  the  increase  of  the  King’s  revenue  and 
of  the  national  resources  had  been  long  working  in  his  mind, 
the  recovery,  viz.,  of  a  portion  of  the  royal  lands,  and  the 
establishing  agricultural  colonies  from  England  upon  them. 
Side  by  side  with  the  rise  of  the  monarchy  went  national 
improvement  (we  take  the  word  in  its  modern  and  mercantile 
sense)  in  Strafford’s  view :  to  separate  them  would  be  simply 
not  understanding  the  administration  of  one  who,  in  addition  to 
beingroyalist  and  bigot,  was  as  ardent  and  scheming  a  political 
economist  as  was  ever  a  Pitt  or  a  Huskisson,  a  Macculloch  or 
Ricardo. 

Landed  property  at  this  time  throughout  Ireland  was 
generally  in  an  unsettled  state,  having  so  frequently  in  recent 
periods  of  rebellion  and  anarchy  changed  hands ;  the  royal  lands 
especially.  Tracts  extending  over  the  whole  province  of  Con¬ 
naught  and  other  large  districts,  were  held  under  an  ambiguous 
and  obscure  title,  disputed  between  the  Crown  and  the  occu¬ 
pants.  To  take  one  instance  :  the  whole  province  of  Con¬ 
naught  had  lapsed  by  confiscation  to  the  Crown  in  the  reign 
of  Henry  ill.,  who  granted  it  to  the  family  of  De  Burgh,  from 
which,  by  the  marriage  of  Ann  de  Burgh  into  the  House  of 
York,  it  ultimately  returned  to  the  Crown  in  the  reign  of 
Edward  IV.  The  Irish  Parliament  in  the  reign  of  Henry 


Lord  Strafford. 


39 


vii.  confirmed  the  Crown  in  the  right,  and  a  Commission 
appointed  by  Queen  Elizabeth  made  a  composition  with  the 
occupants  for  an  annual  rent- charge  in  lieu  of  the  old  fees. 
An  interval  of  confusion  and  rebellion  succeeded  ;  and  an 
ignorant  body  of  commissioners,  in  the  13th  of  James  I., 
cheated  into  the  belief  that  Queen  Elizabeth’s  arrangement, 
instead  of  being  merely  an  exchange  of  a  regular  for  an  irregular  J 
rent,  had  been  a  cession  of  the  Crown  right  of  property  altogether, 
accepted  the  farce  of  a  surrender  of  the  lands  to  the  Crown 
from  the  occupants,  in  pretended  humiliation  for  never  having 
paid  the  rent- charge,  and  then  reinstated  them  in  the 
ownership.  Strafford  denied  the  legality  of  the  whole  trans¬ 
action,  on  the  ground  that  there  could  be  neither  surrender  nor 
restitution  of  a  title  which  had  never  been  possessed.  The 
occupants  themselves  confessed  their  difficulties,  and  the  late 
Parliament  had  petitioned  for  some  general  measure  to  estab¬ 
lish  defective  titles.  Nothing  is  clearer,  we  think,  than  that 
the  Crown  had  been  defrauded ;  at  the  same  time,  no  remedy 
could  be  applied  which  would  not  both  appear  and  be  severe. 

It  was  one  of  those  cases  in  which  either  way  there  was  a 
something  to  get  over  ;  either  great  injustice  to  be  tolerated, 
or  an  unscrupulous  strength  of  arm  exerted  against  it.  Straf¬ 
ford  chose  the  latter  alternative  ;  and  the  issue  of  the  late 
session  had  established  his  authority  sufficiently  to  warrant 
his  commencing  without  delay. 

A  Commission  of  Plantations,  composed  of  the  Lord 
Deputy  and  some  members  of  the  Council,  proceeded  to 
take  the  round  of  the  province  of  Connaught.  The  occasion 
first  brought  Strafford  into  contact  with  the  body  of  gentry 
and  commonalty,  and  sharply  tested  his  view  of  managing  the 
Irish  temper — “  good  words  ”  for  some,  “  sound  knocks  on  the 
knuckles”  for  others.  They  collected  a  grand  jury  in  each 
county,  and  proceeded  to  claim  a  ratification  of  the  rights  of  the 
Crown.  The  gentlemen  on  being  empanelled  were  informed 
that  the  case  before  them  was  irresistible,  and  that  no  doubt 
could  exist  in  the  minds  of  reasonable  men  upon  it.  His  * 
Majesty  was  in  fact  “  indifferent  whether  they  found  for  him 
or  no,”  inasmuch  as  an  ordinary  writ  from  the  Court  of 


40 


Lord  Strafford. 


Exchequer,  which  had  only  to  he  moved  for  by  the  Attorney- 
General,  would  instantly  give  him  the  benefit  of  the  law  ;  but 
out  of  his  high  and  princely  consideration  for  his  subjects  he 
wished  to  deal  thus  openly,  and  satisfy  them  by  proof. 

“  And  there  I  left  them,”  says  Strafford,  “  to  chant  together,  as 
they  call  it,  over  their  evidence.”  The  counties  of  Eos- 
common,  Sligo,  and  Mayo  instantly  found  a  title  for  the  King ; 
and  Strafford,  who  always  proportioned  his  civility  to  the 
loyalty  and  submission  of  the  parties,  was  all  sweetness  and 
grace,  and  much  bowing  and  smiling  passed  between  him  and 
the  good  people  of  Koscommon. 

But  Galway  presented  a  different  front  to  the  Commission. 
The  Lord  President  of  this  county  was  Lord  St.  Albans  and 
Clanricarde,  with  whom  Strafford  had  already  come  into  col¬ 
lision  on  the  question  of  Church  lands ;  indeed,  the  suit  was 
pending  against  him  at  the  very  time  in  the  Castle  Chamber. 
As  proprietor  of  half  the  county,  he  had  a  preponderance  there, 
which  in  connection  with  his  office  amounted  to  a  species  of 
sovereignty ;  and  he  was  the  head  of  a  numerous  and  powerful 
clan — everybody  in  Galway  was  a  Bourke,  or  next  to  one.  The 
Sheriff  knew  whom  he  was  amongst,  and  packed  a  jury  accord¬ 
ingly  ;  and  Donellan,  the  Earl’s  steward,  had  made  all  arrange¬ 
ments  while  the  Commission  were  on  progress  to  them.  The 
whole  county  on  Strafford’s  cntrte  bristled  with  opposition,  and 
on  the  day  of  the  court  opening,  long  before  the  verdict,  Lord 
Clanmorris,  nephew  of  Clanricarde,  openly  exulted,  and  only 
wished  that  Galway  had  come  first  in  the  list  of  counties,  that 
its  example  might  have  invigorated  the  others.  The  Bourkes 
displayed  the  utmost  contempt  for  the  formalities  of  court. 
Another  of  the  Earl’s  nephews,  “Bichard  Bourke  of  Derri- 
machloglin,”  impudently  pulled  a  juror  by  the  sleeve  whom 
Strafford  was  in  the  act  of  addressing,  and  prevented  him  from 
attending.  The  result  of  course  corresponded.  Donellan,  who 
was  among  the  jury,  dictated  the  verdict,  the  rest  obeyed 
order. 

Strafford’s  measures  on  this  announcement  were  prompt, 
vigorous,  and  complete.  The  jurymen  were  summoned  to  the 
Castle  Chamber  to  answer  for  their  contumacy;  the  Sheriff 


Lord  Strafford. 


4i 


was  fined  a  thousand  pounds  for  packing  the  jury,  the  squire 
of  Derrimachloglin  five  hundred.  Proclamation  was  made  in 
the  King’s  name,  inviting  all  subjects  to  acknowledge  his 
Majesty’s  undoubted  rights.  The  county  was  cleared  of  the 
Clanricarde  retainers,  and  the  strong  forts  of  Galway  and 
Athonry  garrisoned  with  the  King’s  troops.  Galway  thus  left 
in  military  occupation,  the  Commission  moved  off  to  the  other 
scenes  of  its  labours.  Eventually  the  county  was  obliged  to 
submit.  Those  who  would  not  obey  the  proclamation  lost, 
some  a  third,  others  a  half,  of  their  estates,  and  the  King’s  title 
was  enforced  by  writ  of  exchequer.  The  Earl  died  not  long 
after,  his  party  declared  of  a  broken  heart  in  consequence  of 
these  proceedings,  “at  the  age” — Strafford  not  unreasonably 
put  in — “  of  seventy.” 

The  Commission,  on  leaving  Galway,  proceeded  through 
Munster  with  great  expedition  and  success.  Strafford  ex¬ 
perienced  here,  as  he  had  in  Eoscommon,  the  advantage  of  a 
popular  manner  applied  to  the  proper  persons.  At  the  last 
session  of  Parliament,  a  young  peer  had  entered  the  house  with 
his  sword,  contrary  to  the  express  order  of  Strafford,  who 
knew  the  temperament  of  the  Irish  enough  to  dislike  trusting 
them  with  weapons.  The  sergeant-at-arms  requested  to  have 
it,  and  was  told  that  if  he  had  it  he  should  have  it  through  his 
body.  Strafford  sent  for  the  daring  youth,  and  proceeded  to 
interrogate  him  fiercely.  The  young  peer  answered  him  with 
equal  spirit,  and  pointed  to  the  clause  in  the  King’s  writ 
which  summoned  him  to  Parliament — “  cindum  cum  gladio or 
“  cum  cindurd  gladii .”  This  was  just  the  behaviour  to  take 
Strafford  :  he  conceived  an  affection  for  young  Ormond  on  the 
spot,  made  trial  of  him,  gave  him  promotion,  and  took  him  into 
his  confidence.  The  Ormonds  possessed  an  extensive  and 
princely  domain  in  Munster,  and  their  name  ranked  with  the 
noblest  in  Ireland.  The  King’s  title  labouring  under  some 
difficulties  here,  the  young  head  of  the  family  came  immediately 
to  the  rescue,  and  he  and  Strafford  together  carried  the  point 
gallantly.  The  Lord  Deputy  acknowledged  with  warm  grati¬ 
tude  in  his  despatches  home  the  service  of  the  young  noble¬ 
man,  afterwards  the  great  Ormond,  Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ireland. 


42 


Lord  Strafford . 


By  the  successful  progress  of  this  Commission  a  large  quan¬ 
tity  of  land — the  occupiers  being  generally  glad  to  compound 
with  a  fourth  part — returned  into  the  King’s  possession,  and 
Strafford  proceeded  to  turn  it  to  its  designation.  He  had 
carved  out  a  wearisome  task  for  himself.  The  transplanting 
and  settlement  of  English  colonists  was  a  slow,  heavy  business, 
a  continual  drain  upon  him  all  the  time  he  was  in  Ireland.  He 
had  his  heart,  however,  thoroughly  in  the  work,  and  watched 
over  his  infant  colonies  with  an  almost  parental  anxiety.  The 
infusion  of  English  enterprise  and  activity  into  Ireland  was  a 
favourite  object,  which  he  cleaved  to  to  the  last,  in  spite  of 
Irish  prejudice  and  the  feeble  support  of  the  English  Cabinet ; 
and  the  plantations  of  Galway  had  made  considerable  advance 
before  his  departure. 

The  commerce  and  trade  of  Ireland  came  no  less  under  his 
reforming  eye,  and  remarkable  was  the  metamorphosis  which 
they  underwent.  Before  Strafford’s  time  the  country  had  no 
manufactures,  except  an  inferior  coarse  woollen  one,  on  a  poor, 
meagre  scale.  Alive  to  this  great  deficiency,  he  had  even 
before  his  arrival  planned  and  matured  in  his  head  the  remedy 
for  it :  it  was  at  Chester,  amid  the  noise  and  hurry  of  his  first 
embarkation  for  Dublin,  that  he  penned  the  important  despatch 
which  originated  Irish  manufactures. 

His  line  was  bold.  The  woollen  manufacture,  though 

7  O 

tempting  as  a  foundation  ready  to  hand  to  build  upon,  he  fore¬ 
saw  would  never  succeed,  as  it  would  bring  England  and  Ire¬ 
land  into  competition.  England  at  present  indraped  Irish 
wools :  he  would  not  deprive  her  of  the  advantage,  and  benefit 
one  portion  of  the  kingdom  at  the  expense  of  another.  Con¬ 
sequently  a  new  line  must  be  fixed  upon.  The  Irish  women 
were  good  spinners,  the  Irish  a  fine  soil  for  growing  flax ;  he 
resolved  upon,  and  got  the  King’s  approval  for,  a  linen  trade. 

So  new  an  undertaking  required  an  extraordinary  start  to 
set  it  going,  and  commend  it  to  Irish  enterprise.  The  best 
recommendation  was  example.  Strafford  set  up  a  manufactory 
of  his  own,  and  became  in  projpria  persona  the  founder  of  the 
illustrious  order  of  Irish  millowners.  Six  looms,  with  work¬ 
men  for  them  from  the  Low  Countries,  procured  through  Sir 


Lord  Strafford. 


43 


William  Boswell,  the  English  agent,  were  the  humble  com¬ 
mencement  of  the  scheme  ;  yet  no  sooner  did  Strafford  see  his  4 
little  mill  at  work  than  his  sanguine  spirit  leapt  to  the  result. 
“We  shall  beat,”  he  said,  “the  Hollander  and  the  French 
twenty  per  cent.”  The  cool  audacity  of  the  prophecy  is 
amusingly  characteristic  of  the  man.  Never  mind  how  ex¬ 
tensive,  how  systematised,  how  long  established,  the  two  master 
linen  trades  of  the  world  must  retire  and  hide  their  diminished 
heads  before  “  me  and  my  six  looms.”  His  imagination  made 
magicians  of  his  half-dozen  Flemings,  endowed  these  six  looms 
with  miraculous  energy,  and  saw  by  anticipation  a  busy  world 
of  labour — mills,  bales,  and  warehouses  issue  from  their  rest¬ 
less  and  prolific  frames.  The  following  year  he  purchased  a 
thousand  pounds’  worth  of  flax-seed,  and  enlarged  the  scale 
of  his  exertions.  “  It  will  be  the  greatest  enriching  of  this 
kingdom  that  ever  befell  it,”  he  writes  to  Boswell,  and  the 
event  has  corresponded. 

Schemes  of  equal  boldness  for  the  foreign  trade  of  the 
country  have  not,  amid  European  fluctuations,  had  the  same 
permanence.  The  great  maritime  power  of  the  world  at  that 
time  was  Spain  :  large  and  splendidly  equipped  fleets  annually 
set  out  from  her  ports  to  her  possessions  in  South  America 
and  the  West  Indies;  the  lucrative  trade  of  victualling  them 
was  at  present  enjoyed  by  the  Hamburg  merchants.  Ireland 
abounded  just  in  the  very  articles  necessary  for  it — meat, 
butter,  salt  fish  :  droves  of  cattle  even  in  that  day  left  its 
rich  pastures  for  English  consumption.  Strafford  formed  the 
scheme  of  robbing  Hamburg  of  her  victualling  trade,  and 
entered  into  treaty  with  Seignior  Mcholhaldie,  one  of  his 
Catholic  Majesty’s  provivadors  at  Hamburg,  for  its  transference 
to  Ireland.  Nicholhaldie  was  favourable,  and  one  point  only 
remained  to  be  attended  to — an  important  one.  England  was 
in  no  good  odour  with  the  Spanish  nation,  the  Spanish  nation 
still  less  with  England.  For  the  latter  prejudice,  connected 
as  it  was  with  the  puritanical  feeling,  Strafford  entertained 
sufficient  contempt ;  the  former,  should  it  take  the  turn  of  im¬ 
peding  the  regularity  of  his  Catholic  Majesty’s  payments  for 
Irish  produce,  was  regarded  with  more  respect.  He  took  in 


44 


Lord  Strafford. 


Seignior  Mcholhaldie  himself  as  a  partner  and  sharer  of  the 
profits,  thus  securing  the  Irish  a  faithful  paymaster ;  in  fact, 
making  them,  as  he  said,  “  their  own  paymasters.”  The 
whole  arrangement  was  concluded  before  Nicholhaldie  had  set 
foot  in  Ireland. 

But  Strafford’s  chef -d’ oeuvre  in  the  department  of  com¬ 
merce  was  the  complete  reform  of  the  customs — immediately 
a  revenue  measure  only,  ultimately  a  general  commercial  one. 

The  customs  of  Ireland,  before  Strafford’s  time,  were  farmed 
almost  exclusively  by  two  ladies  of  the  English  Court,  the 
Duchess  of  Buckingham  and  Lady  Carlisle.  They  produced 
just  £12,000  per  annum,  and  the  Irish  Council  assured 
Strafford  positively  and  dogmatically,  that  they  could  not  be 
made  to  produce  more,  and  insisted,  as  people  obstinately  do, 
on  the  absolute  perfection  and  finality  of  a  palpable  and  grossly 
bad  arrangement.  The  ladies  were  difficult  also  to  manage, 
and  could  not  be  overruled  with  Strafford’s  usual  high  hand. 
Some  situations  inspire  peculiar  pertinacity  on  pecuniary 
matters ;  and  a  fashionable  dowager,  who  has  her  town 
establishment  and  rounds  of  parties  to  provide  for,  watches 
her  source  of  income  with  the  vigilance  of  a  half-pay  officer 
and  the  dexterity  of  a  hackney- coachman.  They  knew  the 
value  of  their  patent  to  Strafford,  and  stuck  out  for  high  com¬ 
pensation.  At  last,  after  much  respectful  solicitation,  and 
much  backwards  and  forwards  debate,  a  capital  interest  in  one 
of  the  new  Crown  estates,  and  a  bribe  of  £8000,  purchased  Lady 
Carlisle’s  patent ;  and  ample  equivalents  prevailed  upon  the 
Duchess  of  Buckingham. 

Strafford,  now  master  of  the  customs,  put  them  up  to  com¬ 
petition  at  an  enormously  advanced  rent.  Erom  £9500  a  year, 
the  Duchess  of  Buckingham’s  share  was  raised  to  a  rent  of 
£15,500,  the  payment  of  five-eighths  of  the  annual  proceeds 
to  the  King,  and  a  fine  of  £8000  besides.  But  competitors 
were  not  so  easy  to  find  ;  an  increased  rent  could  only  be  met 
by  an  increased  impost,  which  stood  a  chance  of  defeating 
itself  by  lowering  the  consumption  of  the  article.  The  under¬ 
taking  was  felt  to  be  a  risk.  Two  men,  Henshaw  and  Williams, 
came  forward,  but  Henshaw  died,  and  Williams  then  with- 


Lord  Strafford. 


45 


drew,  contenting  himself  with  pressing  Sir  Arthur  Ingram  to 
take  his  place.  Sir  Arthur  Ingram  demanded  security ;  no 
security  was  better  than  the  partnership  of  the  Lord  Deputy 
himself ;  Strafford  saw  the  necessity  of  giving  it  in  order  to 
prevent  the  scheme  from  falling,  and,  as  he  had  before  turned 
manufacturer,  headed  the  new  revenue -farming  speculation. 

It  turned  out  eventually  profitable,  and  Strafford  was  of  course 
accused  of  self-interested  motives.  He  gave  the  manly, 
straightforward  answer,  that  he  had  made  the  venture,  and 
had  a  right  to  the  success ;  nor  is  there  the  shadow  of  a 
ground  for  attributing  to  him  any  other  intention  in  the 
matter  than  a  strictly  public-spirited  one. 

From  the  immutable  £12,000,  the  customs  thus  rose  quickly 
to  £40,000,  with  every  prospect  of  continual  increase  as  old  ^ 
farms  fell  in.  The  tobacco  farm  of  £200  a  year  expiring,  was 
put  up  for  £7000,  to  rise  in  a  certain  time  to  £12,000  a  year, 
and  was  taken,  when  every  one  else  declined,  by  Strafford 
himself. 

An  augmented  revenue  was  not  allowed  to  end  with  itself  : 
Strafford’s  aim  was  by  means  of  a  revenue  to  enlarge  com¬ 
merce  ;  by  means  of  an  enlarged  commerce  to  increase 
revenue  ;  to  allow  what  was  collected  out  of  the  nation  to 
transpire  through  the  nation  again,  and  thence  recall  it  with 
interest  into  the  treasury.  The  national  resources  would  thus 
pass  and  repass  through  a  fructifying,  expanding  process,  and 
a  healthy  ebb  and  flow  of  commercial  life  be  produced. 

A  mint  was  the  most  effectual  security  for  this  appropria¬ 
tion  of  the  revenue,  converting  it  at  once  into  Irish  coin  for 
circulation  through  the  country.  The  scarcity  of  money  was 
severely  felt  in  Ireland,  and  Strafford,  before  completing  his 
negotiations  for  the  Spanish  trade,  had  bargained  with  the 
English  Cabinet  for  the  establishment  of  a  mint  to  convert  its 
profits  into  specie,  to  stay  in  the  country,  instead  of  going 
up  straight  for  absorption  in  the  English  treasury.  A  con¬ 
stant  fight  went  on  between  Strafford  and  the  home  govern¬ 
ment  on  this  point.  On  every  increase  of  revenue  the 
English  treasury  instinctively  opened  its  jaws  for  the  precious 
morsel ;  greediness  was  indeed  an  excusable  fault  in  its  sad 


46 


Lord  Strafford. 


necessities  ;  but  Strafford  was  obstinate.  ‘  Do  not  be  in  a 
burry/  he  said ;  ‘  allow  us  the  money  for  the  present  :  Ireland 
wants  specie  ;  it  is  necessary  for  her  commerce,  she  cannot 
get  on  without  it :  only  wait,  and  you  will  be  repaid  ten  times 
over  in  the  customs  that  an  improved  commerce  will  bring 
you  ;  but  do  not  by  eagerly  catching  at  the  seed  forestall  the 
harvest/  The  home  government  sent  for  the  rents  of  the 
Londonderry  land,  and  Strafford  refused  to  part  with  them  ; 
the  home  government  sent  a  second  time,  and  received  not 
the  money,  but  a  lecture  on  political  economy  instead.  The 
spare  corner  of  a  despatch  ejaculated  “specie,”  and  the  merits 
of  specie  were  again  and  again  dinned  into  their  ears. 

What  is  so  striking  in  Strafford’s  statesmanship  is  its  rest¬ 
less  saliency,  elasticity,  fecundity.  Spring  and  impulse  its 
very  state,  the  bent  bow  abhorred  quiescence  ;  design  ad¬ 
vanced  beyond  itself,  and  sight  saw  further  than  the  object. 
One  thought  was  the  parent  of  another ;  hint  swelled  into 
form  and  dimension ;  scheme  developed  scheme ;  and  his 
administration  shows  like  a  good  composition  in  which 
thought  flows  and  expands  freely,  producing  a  harmonious 
whole. 

Equally  striking  is  his  love  of  detail — no  taste  from  a  mere 
hobby  with  him,  but  an  accuracy  of  the  whole  eye.  The 
acute  glance  split  at  once  the  smooth  surface  into  lines  and 
sections,  details  pricked  their  way  upwards,  and  the  vague 
teemed  with  minute  life  under  his  eye,  as  animalcules  multiply 
under  the  sunbeam.  A  Court  ceremonial,  a  table  of  revenue, 
a  valuation  of  a  Crown  estate,  statistics,  estimates  of  wools, 
wines,  tobacco,  soap,  tallow — anything — had  each  the  charm 
of  a  hobby  for  him ;  producing  the  accurate  sum,  the  neat 
official  report.  Your  hobby  and  your  details  are  what  give  the 
relish  and  wed  the  man  to  his  task  :  secret  of  depth  and  in¬ 
tensity,  source  of  glow  and  richness,  from  the  temple  of  truth 
down  to  the  workshop,  from  the  laboratory  to  the  farm-yard — 
retort  and  crucible  inspire  the  philosopher ;  bright  harness- 
hook  and  bell  the  rustic  waggoner.  Ireland  was  Strafford's 
hobby — a  work  and  creation  he  felt  to  be  his  own,  as  it 
rose  out  of  chaos  into  shape  before  him  ;  he  felt  parentally 


Lord  Strafford. 


47 


towards  his  child,  and  acted  the  nurse  hanging  with  minute 
attentions  about  her  charge. 

A  universal  hobby  puts  a  man  in  a  philanthropic  but  not 
very  easy  position.  Business  increased  in  a  cubic  ratio  upon 
Strafford,  one  day’s  work  was  the  seed  of  many  more,  and  Ire¬ 
land  with  her  Parliament,  law,  revenue,  manufactures,  com¬ 
merce,  Church,  clergy,  university,  spun  like  a  top  round  and 
round  in  his  brain,  till  the  constant  whirl  would  have  dizzied 
any  other  head  than  his  own.  He  worked  like  a  horse,  like  a 
steam-engine,  and  he  had  his  triumph.  The  feeliug  of  getting 
things  done  became  an  intense  pleasure,  and  the  long  laborious 
report  goes  off  with  an  ecstatic  jump  of  his  pen  :  “  Deo  gratias 
(to  Laud)  ;  for  I  am  now  at  the  end  of  all  your  letters.  0 
quantam  crowda ,  quantum  pressa ,  profecto  fere  meltavi  pingue 
meum — Ignoramus s  own  words,  coming  piping  hot  from  West¬ 
minster  Hall ;  you  make  no  such  Latin  in  Oxford .” 

Strafford’s  great  experiment  had  now  been  tried,  and  suc¬ 
ceeded  ;  and  in  one  part  of  the  dominions,  at  any  rate,  a  lazy, 
timorous  government  had  become  an  effective  and  bold  one. 
His  great  theory  and  beau-idtal  of  a  popular  monarchy,  a 
monarchy  that  did  its  work  and  looked  after  the  people,  was 
in  a  measure  fulfilled,  and  his  government  was  grateful  to  the 
mass.  He  liked  the  Irish,  notwithstanding  some  sharp  dicta  ; 
and  the  Irish  took  to  the  Lord  Deputy’s  bold,  frank  carriage, 
which  set  off  the  bona  fide  attention  to  their  interests.  The 
people  cheered  him  as  he  went  his  progress  on  the  plantation 
scheme,  because,  said  Strafford,  they  were  better  off  than  they 
had  been  for  ages,  and  felt  the  leniency  of  the  royal  arm,  com¬ 
pared  with  “  the  oppression  of  their  petty  imperious  lords.” 

There  was,  unfortunately,  another  class — the  oligarchy — 
whom  Strafford  had  deprived  of  their  long  and  misused  sway. 
They  caballed,  whispered,  threatened,  and  poisoned  the 
public  mind  with  rumour  and  misrepresentation  to  an  extent 
which  no  government  that  valued  its  own  safety  could  over¬ 
look.  Strafford  resolved  to  make  an  example  of  the  first  man 
upon  whom  any  overt  act  could  be  fixed ;  and  if  the  claims  of 
expediency  and  justice  were  ever  completely  united,  they 
were  in  the  man  who  was  eventually  pitched  upon.  Of  mean 


48 


Lord  Strafford . 


condition  to  begin  with,  which  he  had  advanced  by  low  industry 
and  servile  arts,  to  an  ample  fortune,  a  title,  and  a  seat  in  the 
Privy  Council,  Lord  Mountnorris  had  played  with  impunity 
towards  a  succession  of  governments,  with  which  he  was  con¬ 
nected,  the  part  of  hypocrite,  scoundrel,  and  traitor.  Delibe¬ 
rately  and  systematically  he  got  hold  of  the  Deputy  on  his 
arrival,  crept  into  his  confidence,  corrupted  his  integrity, 
wheedled  preferment  out  of  him  during  his  administration,  and 
then  accused  him  on  his  retirement.  He  had  done  so  toward 
Lord  Chichester,  Lord  Grandison,  and  Lord  Falkland ;  and 
even  Clarendon,  who  is  far  from  an  admirer  of  Strafford,  and 
allows  him  no  higher  motives  than  those  of  individual  self¬ 
protection  in  this  affair,  admits  that  “  either  the  Deputy  of 
Ireland  must  destroy  my  Lord  Mountnorris,  whilst  he  con¬ 
tinued  in  his  office,  or  else  my  Lord  Mountnorris  must  destroy 
the  Deputy  as  soon  as  his  commission  was  determined.”  Two 
trifling  but  characteristic  occurrences  form  the  introduction  of 
the  story. 

On  a  review  day  in  Dublin,  Strafford,  inspecting  his  troop, 
observed  an  officer  named  Annesly  out  of  his  place,  disordering 
the  ranks,  and  rebuked  him.  Annesly,  on  the  Lord  Deputy’s 
back  being  turned,  gave  vent  to  some  insolent,  jeering  expres¬ 
sions,  which  were  heard.  Strafford,  not  a  man  to  be  insulted, 
especially  upon  military  ground,  rode  back,  and,  in  the  sight  of 
the  whole  field,  quietly  laying  his  cane  uponAnnesly’s  shoulders, 
without  striking  him,  informed  the  petulant  officer,  that  upon 
any  such  demonstration  occurring  again,  he  should  “  lay  him 
on  the  pate.”  The  Thersites  was  cowed,  and  the  act  of  con¬ 
tempt  served  the  purpose  of  a  more  formal  punishment. 

But  Mr.  Annesly  was  once  more  destined  to  come  in  con¬ 
tact  with  the  Lord  Deputy’s  cane.  Attending  upon  him  as 
gentleman-in- waiting,  he  let  a  stool  fall  upon  his  foot,  his 
gouty  foot,  and  Strafford,  in  a  moment  of  irritation  from  the 
pain,  struck  him.  While  the  affair  was  fresh,  and  circulating 
rapidly,  Lord  Mountnorris  happened  to  meet  a  large  party  at 
the  table  of  Lord  Chancellor  Loftus,  a  kindred  spirit  with 
himself,  and  mortal  enemy  of  Strafford.  A  number  of  military 
men  were  present,  whose  feelings  would  be  naturally  excitable 


Lord  Strafford. 


49 


on  the  subject  of  the  harsh  or  contemptuous  treatment  of  a 
comrade.  The  troops  had  not  yet  dispersed  from  their  late 
meeting,  and  still  crowded  Dublin  ;  an  inflammatory  innuendo 
would  spread  as  soon  as  uttered,  and  take  effect  in  a  hundred 
circles.  It  was  in  such  a  scene  and  circumstances  that  Lord 
Mountnorris  chose  to  say,  alluding  to  Annesly  letting  the  stdol 
fall,  that  perhaps  it  was  done  in  revenge  for  that  public  affront 
that  my  Lord  Deputy  had  done  him  personally ;  but  he  had  a 
brother  who  would  not  take  such  a  revenge, — “  who  would  not 
have  taken  such  a  blow,”  is  Clarendon’s  reading.” 

This  speech  was  an  overt  act ;  and  Strafford,  resolved  upon 
producing  a  sensation,  brought  down  the  whole  pomp  and 
terror  of  the  law  upon  the  speaker.  Mountnorris,  as  an  officer 
in  the  army,  came  under  military  law ;  the  articles  of  war 
punished  with  death  any  one  guilty  of  “  words  likely  to  breed 
mutiny  in  the  army;”  a  court-martial  met,  the  words  were 
proved,  and  Mountnorris  was  condemned  to  die. 

The  whole  proceeding  was  a  solemn  farce,  meant  to  strike 
terror  into  the  Irish  disaffected.  Pomp  and  bombast  produced 
an  impression  upon  the  Irish  ;  Strafford  made  plentiful  use  of 
it  during  his  administration,  and  now  wished  to  try  what  a 
bristling,  moustachioed  tribunal,  with  the  aid  of  nodding  plume 
and  dazzling  breastplate  and  the  clang  of  trumpets  could  do. 
That  he  never,  from  the  first,  had  the  smallest  idea  of  putting 
Mountnorris  to  death,  or  of  doing  him  the  least  bodily  harm, 
is  quite  certain ;  and  it  is  a  simple  blunder  and  misunder¬ 
standing  upon  such  a  supposition  to  ground,  as  people  do, 
a  solemn  charge  of  barbarity.  All  the  advantage  that  was 
taken  of  the  sanguinary  sentence  was  to  put  Mountnorris  into 
temporary  confinement,  from  which  he  was  liberated  simply 
with  the  loss  of  office.  The  proceeding  humbled  him  consider¬ 
ably  ;  and  when  Strafford,  to  prove  that  he  had  never  enter¬ 
tained  personal  animosity,  but  only  wished  on  public  grounds 
for  his  disconnection  with  the  Government,  offered  to  give  up 
a  suit  pending  against  him  in  the  Star-Chamber,  Mountnorris 
acknowledged  the  generosity  with  much  apparent  warmth. 
And  the  whole  affair  would  have  passed  off  with  the  news  of 
the  day,  if  Pym  and  his  associates  had  not  revived  it. 
m.e.-i.]  D 


50 


Lord  Strdfford 


The  hydra  of  the  Council  board  had  not  lost  its  produc¬ 
tiveness.  The  celebrated  case  of  the  Chancellor  Loftus,  though 
at  first  sight  not  of  a  political,  but  personal  bearing,  plainly 
derived  its  deadliness  and  sting  from  the  unfathomable  abyss 
of  hostility  which  Strafford’s  independent  government  had 
opened  between  himself  and  the  Irish  oligarchy. 

Sir  Edward  Loftus,  eldest  son  of  the  Chancellor,  was 
married  to  a  lady  of  distinguished  birth  and  large  fortune, 
daughter  of  Sir  Francis  Ruishe.  The  Chancellor  had  bound 
himself  at  the  time  of  the  marriage  to  meet  the  wealth  on  the 
lady’s  side  with  a  handsome  settlement  on  his  own,  but  after¬ 
wards  refused  to  fulfil  his  agreement,  and  the  case  came  before 
the  Council  board.  The  Council  decided  against  him,  but  he 
still  persisted  in  his  refusal.  More  than  that,  the  Lord  Deputy 
was  charged  with  being  the  secret  plaintiff  in  the  case,  and 
with  having  instigated  his  own  servants  to  get  it  up.  Strafford 
denied  the  charge,  and  the  Chancellor  gave  him  the  lie — “  he 
wished  to  God  he  had  not  found  it  so.”  Strafford  immediately 
exerted  a  power  which,  perhaps,  no  Deputy  had  done  before 
him,  and  committed  the  Lord  Chancellor  to  prison.  The 
withdrawal  of  the  personal  charge,  with  a  humble  apology, 
was  the  speedy  consequence ;  but  the  money  still  stuck  to 
the  Chancellor’s  purse.  He  appealed  to  the  Star-Chamber ; 
the  Star-Chamber  confirmed  the  judgment  of  the  Council 
board. 

There  is  another  subject  connected  with  this  case,  some 
allusion  to  which,  in  justice  to  Strafford’s  memory,  cannot  be 
avoided.  A  cloud  still  rests  upon  a  noble  character  ;  and  the 
contemporary  scandal  of  an  unlawful  connection  of  Strafford 
with  Lady  Loftus  still  receives  credit. 

We  will  take  the  liberty  of  being  plain.  Everybody  who 
has  lived  in  the  world  knows  that  this  is  just  the  subject,  above 
all  others,  upon  which  men  revel  in  whisper  and  innuendo  at 
their  neighbour’s  expense.  Ho  character  for  correctness,  or 
even  severity  of  life,  can  guard  the  man  compelled  by  his 
station  to  be  a  man  of  the  world,  from  the  look,  the  sign,  the 
insinuation,  developing  at  last  into  the  circumstantial  anecdote. 
Rather  the  disagreeable  fact,  that  he  is  better  than  his  neigh- 


Lord  Strafford. 


5  1 

hours,  positively  elicits  this  mode  of  answer ;  and  the  signifi¬ 
cant  shake  of  the  head,  and  the  all-powerful  “Yes,  hut — ”  give 
to  folly,  ill-nature,  or  pollution,  their  petty  triumph  over  the 
judge  who  unconsciously  awes  them.  The  dialogue  in 
“  Measure  for  Measure”  is  no  caricature  of  the  low  backbiting 
of  the  day  upon  this  very  subject ;  and  we  know  that  circum¬ 
stantial  stories,  with  their  customary  got-up  show  of  evidence, 
impugn  the  morality  of  Charles  I.  and  George  ill.  The 
whole  life — laborious,  severe,  rigidly  abstemious — of  Strafford, 
even  the  grave  step  and  melancholy  countenance,  were  a  hint 
to  the  busy  tongue  to  pare  him  down  to  the  measure  of 
ordinary  men  ;  and  he  had  the  misfortune,  we  may  add,  of 
living  when  veracity  in  the  nation  was  at  a  low  ebb,  i.e.  when 
Puritanism  was  on  the  ascendant.  Though  every  human  jaw 
were  an  oracle,  and  imbecile  credulity  a  law  of  nature,  sense 
and  instinct  would  rise  in  rebellion  against  the  mendacity  of 
the  Puritans.  We  need  only  mention,  as  a  sample,  that  the 
Scotch  Commissioner,  Baillie,  accounts  for  Strafford’s  emotions, 
in  his  last  speech,  at  the  thought  of  his  deceased  wife,  by  a 
story  in  general  circulation,  that  he  had  hilled  her ;  that 
finding,  on  returning  home  late  one  night,  a  letter  from  his 
mistress  on  the  table,  which  she  had  opened,  he  immediately 
struck  her  on  the  breast  with  a  fury  which  caused  her  death. 
The  circumstantial  lie  lived,  and  received  only  the  other  day 
its  complete  contradiction  from  the  liberal  and  democratic 
biographer  of  Strafford  in  Lardner’s  Encyclopaedia. 

The  scandal  of  Strafford’s  connection  with  Lady  Loftus 
would  not  in  fact  demand  an  answer,  were  it  not  adopted  by 
Clarendon.  That  writer,  knowing  nothing  of  Strafford  per¬ 
sonally,  but  taking  it  for  granted  that  he  had  his  amours,  as 
all  gentlemen  had,  and  such  as  he,  Clarendon  himself,  with  “  a 
pickthank  chuckle  of  old  good-humour,”  freely  confesses  to, 
inserts  it  simply  as  he  finds  it,  not  aiming  at  being  anything 
more  than  the  reflection  of  the  talk  of  the  day.  With  respect 
to  the  only  evidence  referred  to — “  certain  letters  of  great 
familiarity  and  affection,  and  others  of  passion,”  to  the  lady, 
which  were  read  at  the  trial — we  need  only  say  that  Strafford 
certainly  does  speak  of  her  in  his  correspondence  with  great 


52 


Lord  Strafford. 


affection,  but  at  the  same  time  in  a  language  which  utterly 
repels  the  notion  of  a  sensual  adulterous  love — lofty,  ethical, 
and  refined.  It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  that  pure  high- 
principled  person,  that  model  of  correct  feeling,  was  his  mistress. 
His  style  always  tended  to  the  high-flown  and  intense,  and  his 
letters  to  Lady  Loftus  doubtless  partook  of  it,  but  to  a  loose 
man’s  loose  interpretation  of  them  we  need  only  say  Honi  soit 
qui  mal  y  pense.  The  authority  of  Clarendon’s  name,  however, 
is  the  ground  on  which  the  case  against  Strafford  rests. 

On  the  other  hand,  not  alluding  specifically  to  this  case, 
but  replying  to  the  charge  of  incontinence  universally — which 
is  more  important  still — a  dear  intimate  friend  and  constant 
adviser,  who  clung  to  Strafford  through  life,  lived  at  his  side, 
saw  more  of  him  than  any  other  man  in  the  world  did,  and 
whose  love  had  thoroughly  conquered  that  disguise  which 
keeps  one  man’s  heart  a  stranger  to  another — the  affectionate 
and  religious  Sir  George  Kadcliffe — comes  forward  to  inform  us 
that  Strafford  had  often  had  conversations  of  the  most  private 
nature  with  him  on  the  subject  of  religion  and  the  state  of  his 
own  soul ;  but  on  two  occasions  especially  :  one  when,  in  the 
deepest  agony  of  mind,  on  the  death  of  his  second  wife,  Sir 
George  never  left  him  day  or  night,  for  several  days  :  another 
on  a  Good  Friday  in  Dublin,  when  Strafford  was  preparing 
himself  for  his  Easter  communion.  On  both  these  occasions 
Eadcliffe  thought  his  friend  had  unfolded  all  his  heart ;  but  on 
neither  did  he  allude  to  this  particular  sin.  Now  this  was  not 
a  subject  which  in  a  serious  and  religious  communication 
between  one  man  and  another  need  have  been  omitted  :  it  is 
a  common  sin  of  the  higher  classes  at  all  times  ;  it  was  a 
common  sin  of  that  day  ;  why  should  Strafford  have  concealed 
it  from  his  confessor  if  he  had  been  guilty  of  it  ?  Disguise,  to 
one  to  whom  he  professed  openness,  was  not  part  of  his 
character.  So  thought  Sir  George  Eadcliffe,  and  he  said, 
“At  both  these  times  I  received  such  satisfaction  as  left  no  scruple 
with  me  at  all ,  but  much  assurance  of  his  chastity This  was 
written  after  Strafford’s  death. 

We  may  observe  here  that  while  the  absence  of  all  allusion 
stamps  the  Loftus  case  with  insignificance,  the  general  defence 


Lord  Strafford. 


53 


completely  covers  it.  Eadcliffe  was  in  Dublin,  close  to  Straf¬ 
ford  at  the  time  ;  lie  could  not  have  avoided  a  glimpse,  a 
suspicion,  of  such  a  connection,  had  it  been  going  on  :  even 
had  he,  a  thousand  malicious  eyes  would  have  seen,  and  could 
have  certified  it  to  him.  .Strafford,  moreover,  wTas  recently 
married  again,  to  a  lady  to  whom  he  felt  and  expressed  all  the 
fondest  feelings  of  a  husband.  Whatever  the  reader  may 
think  of  these  arguments,  we  do  ask  him  not  to  think  a  story 
indestructible  because  it  is  in  books.  Many  a  time  has  a 
bullying  fiction  got  possession  of  history,  and  hectored  and 
stalked  over  the  ground,  when  a  look  has  afterwards  sent  the 
coward  scampering  to  native  Orcus  and  the  realms  of  smoke. 

On  another  point,  however,  we  are  not  prepared  to  justify 
Strafford.  He  was  obviously  not  so  careful  as  he  ought  to 
have  been  to  avoid  the  appearance  and  reputation  of  a  man  of 
gallantry ;  and  he  did  not  do  himself  justice  by  encouraging 
a  lax  set  of  cavalier  acquaintances,  with  whom  he  had  nothing 
in  common  but  a  taste  for  the  humorous  and  hatred  of  the 
Puritans.  It  is  annoying  to  see  the  free  and  easy  tone  which 
Lord  Conway,  quite  a  representative  of  this  class,  assumes  to 
him.  At  the  same  time  it  is  plain  that  these  men  were  proud 
of  their  great  acquaintance,  and  naturally  made  as  much  of  it 
as  they  could.  And  some  consideration  is  due  to  Strafford  if, 
in  the  midst  of  toil  and  care,  he  found  relief  in  an  acquaint¬ 
ance  who  tickled  his  love  of  the  ridiculous  with  amusing 
letters  of  Court  news.  Eadcliffe  probably  alludes  to  such 
features  of  Strafford,  when  he  says,  “  I  knew  his  ways  long 
and  intimately,  and  though  I  cannot  clear  him  from  all  frailties 
(for  who  can  even  justify  the  most  innocent  man  ?),  yet  I  must 
give  him  the  testimony  of  conscientiousness  in  his  ways,  that 
he  kept  himself  from  gross  sins,  and  endeavoured  to  approve 
himself  rather  unto  God  than  unto  man,  to  be  religious 
inwardly  and  in  truth,  rather  than  outwardly  and  in  show.” 
Everybody  knows  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  reserve  and 
disguise  on  this  subject  to  the  world  at  large.  Strafford,  it  is 
plain,  had  much  more  religion  all  along  than  others  thought, 
or  than  he  cared  to  be  known — a  man  of  the  world  externally, 
while  he  maintained  a  high  standard  within. 


54 


Lord  Strafford. 


We  return  to  our  history.  Had  opposition  from  the  men 
of  power  in  Ireland  been  all  that  Strafford  had  to  hear,  he 
would  have  been  comparatively  at  ease.  What  really  touched 
him,  and  went  to  his  heart,  was  the  coldness  and  distrust  of 
the  home  government. 

Amidst  a  variety  of  Straffordian  maxims  two  are  con¬ 
spicuous  :  one  was,  that  a  minister,  in  order  to  effect  his 
object,  ought  to  be  entirely  trusted  by  his  king.  It  was  absurd 
to  think  that  the  political  machine  could  work  without  single¬ 
ness  of  impetus  and  unity  of  action.  The  other  was,  that  a 
minister  in  this  fortunate  position  ought  to  be  ready  to  pay 
for  it  with  his  head.  These  two  maxims  were  the  north  and 
south  poles  of  the  ministerial  sphere,  and  it  is  melancholy 
to  think  that  he  should  have  realised  the  severe  without 
having  benefited  by  the  advantageous  one. 

Of  the  members  of  Charles  i.’s  Cabinet,  Lord  Cottington, 
Lord  Holland,  and  Sir  Francis  Windebank  had  positively 
hostile  feeling  to  Strafford, — especially  the  first  named,  who 
was  at  the  same  time  the  deepest  courtier  of  the  three.  The 
foe  within  the  camp  is  of  course  the  most  formidable,  and  the 
profound  dissembler,  the  cool,  steady,  watchful  Cottington, 
made  no  agreeable  rival  at  headquarters  for  a  distant  Deputy 
to  cope  with.  Strafford  felt  him  all  along  a  thorn  in  his  side, 
and  the  disdain  of  the  genuine  statesman  for  a  mere  Court 
intriguer, — for  “  my  Don  with  his  whiskers”  (allusive  to 
Cottington  s  disgraceful  Spanish  proceedings), — the  adept  in 
“  making  of  legs  to  fair  ladies,”  was  mingled  with  a  sort  of  a 
fear  of  the  power  of  a  wily  narrow  mind  in  its  own  sphere. 
The  rest,  including  Secretary  Coke,  with  whom  he  seems  to 
have  been  on  even  friendly  terms,  were  men  of  no  particular 
talent  or  influence,  and  did  not  press  the  scale  either  way. 
One,  and  one  only,  his  dear  friend  Laud,  stuck  to  him  and 
fought  his  battles  through  thick  and  thin.  Laud,  singly  and 
solely,  opposed  to  the  whole  influence  or  the  indifference  of 
the  English  Cabinet,  kept  him  in  office  from  the  first ;  Strafford 
would  not  have  been  a  month  in  Ireland  but  for  him. 

But  Strafford  felt  the  most  deeply,  the  most  unkindly,  the 
coldness  of  the  King  himself.  His  personal  attachment  to 


Lord  Strafford. 


55 


Charles  was  of  that  peculiarly  affectionate  kind  which  often 
marks  the  intercourse  of  the  strong  inind  with  the  amiable 
weaker  one.  Charles  had  powers  of  attraction  which  should 
have  quite  made  up  for  his  want  of  statesmanship.  The  counten¬ 
ance  of  calm  beauty  and  benign  grace,  the  temper  of  sweet¬ 
ness,  the  mild  but  kingly  manner,  the  incomparable  finish, 
had  imaged  themselves  indelibly  upon  his  minister’s  mind  ; 
and  could  he  have  got  rid  of  his  fears,  and  trusted  this  one 
guide,  he  was  safe  :  his  high-mettled  charger  would  have 
carried  him  over  all  the  Pyms  and  the  Hampdens  right 
speedily.  A  man  who  could  command  the  devotion  of  a  Straf¬ 
ford  was  no  contemptible  monarch.  But  a  weak,  timorous, 
disappointing  politician  he  was ;  and  Strafford  was  always 
uncertain  and  uneasy  about  him.  In  vain  did  Laud  argue  at 
the  Council  board,  in  vain  after  every  arrival  of  the  Irish 
couriers  was  the  archiepiscopal  barge  seen  to  cross  over  to 
Westminster,  and  return  when  some  hours  were  spent.  It 
was  Strafford’s  misfortune  (they  are  the  remarkable  words  of 
the  Primate  himself)  to  serve  a  mild  and  gracious  Prince,  who 
hnew  not  how  to  be  or  to  be  made  great.  Charles  was  afraid  of 
the  power  which  his  own  fascinations  had  raised,  and  all  that 
Laud  could  do  was  barely  to  keep  the  bold  minister  in  office. 

Moreover,  men  are  generally  influenced  in  their  political 
views  by  their  own  particular  art  or  skill,  by  what  they  know 
they  can  do  well.  Charles  had  really  a  talent  for  keeping  men 
together,  and  he  took  that  line ;  instead  of  choosing  which 
side  to  take,  he  applied  himself  to  keeping  a  divided  Cabinet 
going.  And  to  the  credit  of  his  tact,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
he  did  it  where  others  would  have  failed.  But  what  was  the 
good  of  it  when  it  was  done  ?  What  was  the  advantage  of 
keeping  the  party  of  Thorough  and  the  party  of  the  Lady 
Mora  looking  black  at  each  other  at  the  same  board  ?  Par 
better  would  it  have  been  to  let  the  discordant  compound 
blow  up  of  itself,  and  leave  a  clear  atmosphere  to  breathe  in. 

As  it  was,  Charles’s  government  contracted  all  the  odium 
of  a  rigorous  with  none  of  the  advantages  of  a  strict  policy ; 
it  had  just  courage  enough  to  show  its  teeth  and  no  more ;  it 
betrayed  its  inclinations, — ‘  And  no  thanks  to  you,’  thought  the 


56 


Lord  Strafford. 


popular  party,  ‘  for  not  executing  them  ;  we  see  tlie  virulence 
of  your  intentions  notwithstanding  the  poverty  of  your  acts, 
and  we  hate  your  malice  none  the  less  for  your  cowardice.’ 
The  Puritan  faction  never  really  felt  the  force  of  a  well- 
sustained  crushing  line  of  attack,  and  the  irregular  sally,  and 
occasional  sharp  blow,  were  paralysed  by  some  mixture  of 
weakness,  which  converted  the  severity  into  a  stimulus  and 
encouragement.  Tiie  Puritans  only  preached  and  scribbled, 
reviled  and  pamphleteered  the  more,  and  grew  stronger  and 
stronger  under  a  relaxed  government,  without  having  one  bit 
of  their  rancour  and  insolence  softened.  Laud  saw  all  this  with 
disgust  and  impatience  go  on  under  his  eyes,  himself  unable 
to  stop  it,  or  to  put  more  nerve  and  spirit  into  Charles  than 
Charles  was  capable  of  receiving.  He  forced  the  Council 
indeed  to  inflict  punishment  on  Prynne,  Burton,  and  Bastwick. 
“  But  what  think  you  of  Thorough,”  he  writes  immediately 
after  it  to  Strafford, — “  what  think  you  of  Thorough  when  there 
can  be  such  slips  in  business  of  consequence  ?  What  say  you 
to  it,  that  Prynne  and  his  fellows  should  be  suffered  to  talk 
what  they  pleased  while  they  stood  in  the  pillory,  and  win 
acclamations  from  the  people  ?  The  triumviri  will  be  far  enough 
from  being  kept  dark.  It  is  true  that  some  men  speak  as  your 
Lordship  writes,  but  when  anything  comes  to  be  acted  against 
them,  there  is  little  or  nothing  done,  nor  shall  I  ever  live  to 
see  it  otherwise.”  Prynne  was  publicly  feted  by  the  corpora¬ 
tion  of  Chester  on  his  way  to  Carnarvon  Castle  ;  and  all  three 
were  allowed  to  enjoy  in  open  day  the  full  honours  of  martyr¬ 
dom  which  their  party  paid  them.  “  Strange  indeed,”  observes 
Strafford,  “to  see  the  frenzy  which  possesseth  the  vulgar 
now-a-days,  that  the  just  chastisement  of  a  State  should  produce 
greater  estimation  to  persons  of  no  consideration,  than  the 
highest  employments,  for  others  of  unspotted  conversation, 
eminent  virtues,  and  deepest  knowledge — a  grievous  and  over¬ 
spreading  leprosy,  not  fitted  for  the  hand  of  every  physician  ; 
the  cure,  under  God,  must  be  wrought  by  one  Esculapius  alone. 
Less  than  Thorough  will  not  overcome  it ;  there  is  a  cancerous 
malignity  in  it,  which  must  be  cut  forth,  which  long  since 
rejected  all  other  means,  and  therefore  to  God  and  him  I  leave 


Lord  Strafford. 


57 


it.”  And  so  with  the  recommendation,  that  Hampden  and  the 
brotherhood  should  be  well  whipped  into  their  right  wits,  and 
putting  the  rod  into  the  Archbishop’s  hands,  he  ends  his 
advice  on  English  affairs  :  “  Send  for  your  chimney-sweeper 
of  Oxford,  who  will  sing  you  a  song  made  of  one  Bond,  a 
schoolmaster  of  St.  Paul’s,  and  withal  show  you  how  to  jerk, 
to  temper  the  voice,  to  guide  the  hand,  to  lay  on  the  rod 
excellently  (sure  I  am  he  made  me  laugh  heartily  when  I 
was  there  last) ;  the  chancellor  of  the  University  might  with 
a  word  bring  him  up  to  your  Lordship  at  Lambeth,  and 
then  for  Mr.  Hampden  and  Mr.  Bond,”  etc.  etc.  Laud  was  too 
melancholy  to  joke  :  “  I  have  given  up,”  he  says,  as  if  his  view 
was  made  up,  “  I  have  given  up  expecting  of  Thorough .” 

Of  a  home  Cabinet  so  constructed,  Strafford  experienced  the 
effects  from  the  first,  in  the  immense  labour  which  he  found 
necessary  to  get  any  of  his  propositions  received.  He  had  to 
fight  time  after  time  with  them  :  for  a  Parliament — for  Poyn- 
ing’s  Act — for  his  plantation  schemes — for  his  revenue  schemes 
— for  his  Church  schemes  ;  he  had  no  sooner  made  money, 
than  he  had  to  fight  for  the  employment  of  it ;  he  had  to  fight 
for  appointments,  for  rewards,  for  punishments.  Powerful 
noblemen — Lord  Clanricarde  (son  of  the  old  Earl),  Lord 
Wilmot,  and  others — appeal  from  him  to  the  English  Council. 
‘'Don’t  listen  to  him,”  writes  up  Strafford  ;  “you  are  encouraging 
disaffection  in  thousands  if  you  do ;  he  is  the  head  of  a  party.” 
“  But  this. is  just  the  reason,”  is  Charles’s  view,  “  why  I  must.” 
“  Don’t  be  afraid,”  says  Strafford,  “  I  will  take  all  the  odium 
upon  myself.  Whenever  persons  appeal  to  you,  tell  them  that 
you  hold  the  Deputy  responsible,  and  send  them  back.”  The 
absolute  duty  of  a  minister  to  take  odium  to  any  extent  off 
his  monarch’s  back  was  a  maxim  constantly  in  Strafford’s 
mouth ;  and  happy  was  the  Deputy  if  he  got  his  own  way 
anyhow ;  but  the  fear  which  the  King  evinced  of  these 
aristocrats,  the  time  that  their  appeals  stood,  and  the  half  or 
favourable  decision  at  last,  vexed  Strafford  personally,  and 
weakened  him  politically.  The  last  scene  of  his  Irish  govern¬ 
ment  was  embittered  by  the  triumph,  after  a  long  contest,  of 
Lord  Clanricarde  over  him  in  the  English  Council. 


53 


Lord  Strafford. 


A  hard  tussle  in  which  he  had  engaged  with  Lord  Cork, 
for  the  restoration  of  some  Church  lands,  he  had  to  fight 
literally  alone,  against  Lord  Cork  and  the  English  Cabinet. 
This  nobleman  had,  through  his  relationship  to  the  Cumberland 
family,  considerable  interest  at  Court,  and  a  sort  of  claim  of 
connection  upon  Strafford  himself,  who  made  himself  extremely 
obnoxious  to  his  own  relations  by  his  unflinching  disregard  of 
the  private  tie.  The  Cumberland  family  took  up  the  matter 
warmly,  and  Strafford  had  to  endure  all  sorts  of  hard  names, 
and  to  be  called  a  persecutor  of  his  kindred.  But  a  man  with 
such  fixed  public  objects  in  view  was  not  to  be  deterred.  The 
recovery  of  Church  property  was  one  thing  he  had  posi¬ 
tively  determined  on,  the  equal  administration  of  justice  was 
another.  Without  an  able  body  of  clergy,  he  said,  it  would 
be  impossible  to  effect  any  reformation  in  religion  or  manners  ; 
and  Church  property  must  be  got  back  for  that  end.  In  Ireland 
there  had  indeed  been  hitherto  one  law  for  the  rich,  and 
another  for  the  poor,  and  robbery  and  sacrilege  had  been 
winked  at  when  the  offender  could  put  a  title  to  his  name. 
He  was  resolved  to  put  an  end  to  this  system,  to  uphold 
the  sanctity  and  the  spotlessness  of  royal  justice, — to  show  the 
great  and  noble  that  they  were  as  amenable  to  law  as  the  meanest 
subjects,  and  to  comfort  the  hearts  of  the  poor  and  defenceless 
classes  by  the  spectacle  of  a  righteous  government,  bent  on 
extinguishing  the  insolence,  oppression,  and  fraud  of  their 
petty  tyrants.  “  I  never  had,”  he  says  of  Lord  Cork’s  case, — 
“  I  never  had  so  hard  a  part  to  play  in  all  my  life  ;  but  come 
what  please  God  and  the  King,  neither  alliance,  friendship,  or 
other  thing,  shall  be  ever  able  to  separate  me  from  the  service 
of  God  or  my  master,  or  persuade  me  to  quench  the  flame  in 
another  man’s  house  by  taking  the  fire  of  his  guilt  into  my 
own  bowels.” 

There  were  more  galling  trials.  Charles  had  never  been  a 
minister,  and  did  not  know  what  a  minister’s  feelings  were. 
A  low  impudent  Scotchman  of  the  name  of  Barre  penetrated 
into  the  royal  presence,  with  an  unsupported  charge  against 
Strafford,  of  peculation.  Charles,  either  surprised  by  the 
sudden  intrusion,  or  wishing  to  look  impartial,  actually  listened 


Lord  Strafford. 


59 


— nay,  gave  him  a  special  passport,  under  shelter  of  which  the 
fellow  oscillated  between  England  and  Ireland,  collecting  slan¬ 
ders  against  Strafford  for  communication  to  the  Court.  “  And 
now ,  ant  pleese  your  Majesty ,  ea  werde  mare  anent  your  Debuty  of 
Yrland  (Strafford  had  a  trick  of  taking  off  the  dialect  of  the 
Scotch  :  there  was  no  love  lost  between  them),  with  other 
such  botadoes  stuffed  with  a  mighty  deal  of  untruths  and  follies 
amongst.  Ear  be  the  insolency  from  me,”  he  continues,  “  to 
measure  out  for  my  master  with  whom  or  what  to  speak  :  I 
more  revere  his  wisdom,  better  understand  myself.  But  to 
have  such  a  broken  pedlar,  a  man  of  no  credit  or  parts,  to  be 
brought  to  the  King  and  countenanced  by  some  that  have 
cause  to  wish  me  well,  howsoever  I  have  reason  to  believe  I 
shall  not  find  it  so,  only  to  fill  his  Majesty’s  ears  with  untruths 
concerning  me,  and  that  the  whilst  his  foul  mouth  should  not 
either  be  closed,  or  else  publicly  brought  to  justify  what  he 
informs, — to  have  such  a  companion  sent  as  comptrol  and 
superintendent  over  me,  I  confess,  as  in  regard  to  myself  it 
moves  me  not  much,  yet  as  the  King’s  deputy  it  grieves  and 
disdains  me  exceedingly.  Alas !  if  his  Majesty  have  any 
suspicion  I  am  not  to  his  service  as  I  ought,  let  there  be  com¬ 
missaries  of  honour  and  wisdom  set  upon  me  ;  let  them  publicly 
examine  all  I  have  done  ;  let  me  be  heard,  and  after  covered 
with  shame  if  I  have  deserved  it.  This  is  gracious,  I  accept  it, 
magnify  his  Majesty  for  his  justice  ;  but  let  not  the  Deputy 
be  profaned  in  my  person,  under  the  administration  of  such  a 
petty  fellow  as  this,  unto  whom,  believe  me,  very  few  that 
know  him  will  lend  five  pounds,  being  as  needy  in  his 
fortune  as  shifting  in  his  habitation.” 

The  Cottington  party,  who  contrived  these  insults,  allowed 
Strafford  no  rest.  Kumour,  charge,  malicious  whisper,  subtle 
innuendo,  told  upon  his  sensitive  spirit.  “  These  reports  pinch 
me  shrewdly,”  he  says.  He  wrote  up  to  Charles,  and  was  told, 
“  Do  not  buckle  on  your  armour  before  it  is  wanted.”  Charles 
did  not  understand  his  sensitiveness.  He  solicited  one  step 
in  the  peerage,  as  a  proof  that  the  King  had  not  deserted  him, 
and  it  was  denied. 

The  sense  of  ingratitude  always  makes  philosophers  of  us  : 


6o 


Lord  Strafford. 


first  comes  the  sting,  then  the  musing,  speculating,  moralising 
sedative — the  ‘never  mind’ — and  ‘  yes,  it  must  he  so’ — and,  ‘ah  ! 
it  is  the  way  of  the  world  I  ’ — the  reducing  of  our  wrongs  from 
their  personal  and  contingent  to  their  universal  archetypal 
form.  Strafford  had  a  strong  vein  of  metaphysics,  which  soon 
sent  him  on  the  generalising  flight,  far  out  of  sight  of  Charles  and 
the  English  Council.  “In  good  faith,  George  (to  his  cousin), 
all  below  are  growing  wondrous  indifferent.”  The  world,  this 
visible  system  of  things,  was  in  a  sense  necessarily  unjust ; 
and  ingratitude  was  the  law  of  an  imperfect  state.  But  did 
he  think  with  the  poet  that  the  Lady  Astrsea  had  long  since 
gone  to  heaven  ?  Not  quite  so.  Under  favour,  he  could  still 
discern  her:  justice  had  not  ceased  to  be,  but  in  a  loose  dis¬ 
ordered  system  could  not  act.  Men  might  sometimes  be  just, 
could  they  but  agree ;  but  each  had  his  own  standard ;  one 
despised  what  another  appreciated,  and  hopeless  division 
produced  “  a  certain  uncertainty  of  rewards  and  punishments,” 
crossing  their  destination,  and  coming  to  the  wrong  persons. 
Philosophising  Strafford,  he  realised  the  grievance  and  the 

teal  ecr^Xo? — 

sad  burden  of  many  an  heroic  heart,  from  the  time  that  savage 
Caucasus  heard  the  grand  laments  of  a  Prometheus,  and 
Achilles  sounded  his  plaintive  lyre  over  the  Aegean,  and  the 
great  Roman  scorned,  and  Lear  rhapsodised,  and  Hamlet  mused  ; 
age  after  age  the  sad  reproachful  strain  has  floated  vainly 
by,  nor  arrested  for  a  moment  this  deaf  material  machine  of 
things ;  and  on  and  on  will  it  sound,  more  mournful  and  more 
grave,  till,  rising  on  the  gale,  it  ends  in  the  whirlwind’s  sharp 
ominous  cry,  and  becomes  the  dirge  of  a  collapsing  and  dis¬ 
solving  world.  Philosophising,  moralising  Strafford — he  went 
on  drawing  truths  and  lessons  from  Donne’s  anagrams  and 
Yandyck’s  shadows,  till  his  spiritual  consoler  stepped  in,  with 
advice  to  “read  that  short  book  of  Ecclesiastes  while  these 
thoughts  were  upon  him  :  ”  it  would  comfort  him  more  than 
ever  Donne’s  verses  or  Yandyck’s  colours. 

But  there  were  moments  when  all  poetical  consolations 
failed  Strafford.  The  neglect  of  the  home  government  made 
him  feel  acutely  the  desolateness  of  his  position  in  Ireland — 


discouragement — the  ev  Se  /jut}  rifir/  rj/iev  kclkos  ffe 


Lord  Strafford. 


6 1 


standing  alone  amid  conspirators  and  mortal  foes.  Sadness 
and  distress  of  mind  overcame  him  at  times  :  “  The  storm  sets 
dark  upon  me :  it  is  my  daily  bread  to  bear  ill :  all  hate  me,  so 
inconsiderable  a  worm  as  IT  He  looked  forward  with  melan¬ 
choly  relief  to  a  resting-place  in  the  grave,  to  which  his  dread¬ 
ful  bodily  sicknesses  as  well  directed  him.  A  martyr  all  his 
life  to  disease  and  pain,  he  thought  little  of  it ;  the  gout  only 
“  made  him  think  the  more but  an  accumulation  of  dis¬ 
orders  now,  an  intermitting  pulse,  faint  sweats,  the  increasing 
tortures  of  his  old  complaint,  combined  with  his  internal  dis¬ 
tresses  to  drag  him  into  the  depths  of  an  intense,  exaggerated, 
we  should  say  an  unreal,  humility  in  such  a  man,  did  we  not 
take  his  situation  into  account.  Isolation  however  is,  beyond 
question,  a  humbling  thing.  Let  those  think  serenely  of  them¬ 
selves  whom  a  world  embraces,  who  lie  pillowed  and  cushioned 
upon  soft  affections  and  tender  regards  and  the  breath  of 
admiring  circles;  greatness  in  isolation  feels  itself  after  all 
but  a  wreck  and  a  cast-off  from  the  social  system,  wanderer 
forlorn,  worldless  fragmentary  being,  like  the  wild  animal  of 
the  desert — gaunt  solitary  tenant  of  space  and  night.  Yet 
from  the  gloom  of  despondency  and  self-annihilation  broke 
forth  like  lightning  the  mind  of  the  statesman  in  the 
brilliant  scheme  of  finance,  or  the  energetic  blow  which 
brought  a  rebellious  aristocrat  to  the  dust.  The  kingdom 
stood  aghast  at  his  proceedings ;  nobody  understood  so  mys¬ 
terious  a  compound ;  a  report  spread  with  rapidity  through 
the  Court  that  the  Lord  Deputy  was  insane,  and  Lord  Holland 
added,  as  a  fact  of  his  own  knowledge,  that  he  had  once  actu¬ 
ally  been  confined  in  a  madhouse.  Strafford,  in  burning 
indignation,  wrote  and  demanded  an  inquiry  before  the  Star 
Chamber,  which  the  slanderer,  however,  backed  by  his  friends 
in  the  Council,  contrived  to  stave  off  upon  technical  grounds. 
In  truth,  he  was  a  puzzle  to  his  age :  the  hypochondriac  and 
madman,  as  some  would  explain  him,  others  would  have  a 
rank  hypocrite  and  actor;  his  emotions  mere  pieces  of  state¬ 
craft  and  theatrical  display,  and  even  his  last  touching  speech 
at  his  trial — it  is  the  cold-hearted  sneer  of  the  Scotch  Baillie — 
“  as  pathetic  an  oration  as  ever  comedian  made  upon  the  stage T 


62 


Lord  Strafford. 


It  was  in  the  midst  of  these  troubles,  that,  in  the  summer 
of  1636,  Strafford  crossed  the  Channel  and  presented  himself 
before  the  King  in  council  with  an  exposition  of  his  whole 
administration  from  the  beginning.  Clear  and  straightforward 
statements,  a  style  manly,  eloquent,  and  imposing,  and,  above 
all,  the  presence  of  the  man  himself,  produced  their  effect : 
Charles  was  really  carried  away,  English  courtiers,  and  even 
Irish  foes,  began  to  smile  and  look  gracious,  and  Strafford  to 
indulge  in  irony  :  “  He  had  great  professions  from  my  Lord 
Keeper,  and  the  Duke,  and  the  Marquis,  and  the  Chamberlain, 
and  from  my  Lord  Cottington  in  the  most  transcendent  way ; 
my  Lady  of  Carlisle  never  used  him  with  such  respect ;  he  had 
been  very  graciously  used  by  the  Queen ;  my  Lord  of  Durham 
is  my  creature.  Wilmot  hath  visited  me,  and,  now  he  is  able 
to  do  me  no  more  mischief,  makes  great  professions ;  I  do  him 
all  civilities,  wait  upon  him  to  his  coach,  in  good  faith  wish 
him  no  hurt  at  all,  yet  must  the  King  have  his  land.  His  Lord- 
ship  must  answer  my  suit  in  the  Exchequer  Chamber, — send 
me  that  Dedimus  potestatem.” 

For  one  brief  visit  Strafford  was  the  lion  of  the  London 
world,  stared  and  pointed  at,  and  experiencing  vast  civility 
and  attention  from  all  classes,  which,  with  an  amusing  mixture 
of  simplicity  and  statecraft,  he  attributed  wholly  to  his  tempo¬ 
rary  favour  with  the  King ;  adding,  that  though  people  were 
much  mistaken  in  thinking  him  of  such  consideration  with 
his  Majesty,  he  should  not  attempt  to  destroy  an  impression 
so  serviceable  to  his  administration.  Sick  of  the  scene,  he 
hurried  down  the  moment  business  was  over  to  York,  where  a 
circle  of  his  county  friends  met  and  smothered  him  with 
dinners  and  kindness  for  a  week.  He  was  not  sorry  of  an 
escape  to  reflect  affectionately  upon  such  hearty  demonstrations 
at  the  most  solitary  and  retired  of  his  country  seats,  Gauthorp, 
the  old  place  of  the  Gascoignes,  of  Chief-Justice  celebrity. 
One  short,  very  short,  interval  of  perfect  repose  penetrated 
deeply ;  and  a  mind  satiated  with  care  and  business  drank  in 
the  rich  tranquillity  of  country  solitude.  “  Lord,  with  what 
quietness  in  myself  could  I  rest  here  in  comparison  of  that 
noise  and  labour  I  met  with  elsewhere ;  but  let  that  pass  ;  I 


Lord  Strafford. 


63 

am  not  like  to  enjoy  that  blessed  condition  upon  earth.” 
Strange  as  it  may  appear,  retirement  from  the  world,  for  the 
purpose  of  religious  contemplation,  call  it  a  dream,  a  fancy,  or 
what  we  will,  was  a  prospect  which,  amidst  all  the  excitements 
of  government,  dwelt  involuntarily  on  his  mind.  The  moment 
which  launched  him  irrevocably  into  office  stilled  even  his 
throbbing  heart  and  mounting  pulse  with  awe,  and  the  fatal 
plunge  was  succeeded  by  hollow  misgivings.  A  farewell  now 
to  all  those  quiet  retirements  wherein  to  contemplate  things 
more  divine  and  sacred  than  this  world  can  afford.  Interrupted 
at  every  moment  by  the  importunity  of  affairs,  he  could  not 
bear  the  thought  of  dying  a  politician.  What  hypocrisy, 
says  the  modern  biographer,  in  so  ingrained  a  statesman  ! 
We  think  not  so ;  the  deepest  water  is  both  the  most  tempes¬ 
tuous  and  the  most  still,  and  capacities  and  tastes  for  great 
energy  and  great  repose  co-exist  in  heroic  minds,  and  alternate 
mysteriously;  so  at  least  thought  the  poet,  when  he  made  his 
hero,  on  the  stirring  scene  of  fight  and  glory,  think  of  Phthia, 
— so  sweet  to  imagine  himself  only  three  days’  sail  from  his 
beloved  Phthia.  It  was  but  a  moment ;  from  the  shelter  of 
his  nook  Strafford  heard  the  mighty  roar  summoning  him  to 
the  strand,  and  he  looked  out  upon  a  black  boiling  tide  and 
flashing  waves  embattling  the  distant  horizon.  He  embarked 
for  Ireland,  to  enter  on  a  more  tremendous  scene  of  exertion 
even  than  what  he  had  passed  through ;  a  commanding  mind 
came  more  every  day  into  requisition  ;  the  fatal  wheel  moved 
with  a  still  more  awful  velocity  as  it  approached  its  goal ; 
and  to  the  whirling  medley  of  Irish  politics  was  added  the 
still  more  ominous  and  distracting  charge  of  the  Scotch  war. 

The  great  struggle  between  the  Church  of  England  and 
Puritanism,  which  had  been  so  long  preparing,  was  now  be¬ 
ginning  to  break  out.  The  Church,  under  Laud,  after  gradu¬ 
ally  collecting  strength,  and  assuming  more  and  more  of  a 
determined  attitude,  at  last  resolved  upon  the  aggressive  and 
forcible  step  of  fixing  itself  in  Scotland ;  and  the  very  home 
and  hot-bed  of  Puritanism  suddenly  found  itself  under  a  regular 
clergy  and  hierarchy,  with  a  liturgy  more  Catholic  and  canons 
more  stringent  than  the  English.  So  determined  a  move  on 


64 


Lord  Strafford . 


one  side  excited  defiance  on  the  other ;  the  fierce  Puritan 
spirit  boiled  over  at  the  sight  of  the  surplice ;  a  storm  of 
hootings,  and  cries  of  “Pope!  Pope!  Antichrist!”  stopped  the 
first  commencement  of  the  Church  ritual  in  the  Cathedral  of 
St.  Giles  ;  and  the  courageous  and  apostolic  Bishop  Forbes, 
for  instantly  confronting  from  the  pulpit  the  raging  multitude, 
and  endeavouring  to  bring  them  to  reason,  nearly  paid  the 
penalty  of  his  life.  The  omen  of  shrieking  preaching  women 
sounded  a  revolution  at  hand ;  Presbyterian  Scotland  rose 
en  masse ;  the  Covenant  was  signed,  and  the  armies  of  the 
Church  and  the  Conventicle  prepared  for  mortal  conflict. 

Such  was  the  commencement  of  the  Great  Bebellion — an 
essentially  religious  war,  which  the  English  Church  began. 
While  her  meek  Waltons  and  Herberts  were  chanting  in  the 
retired  vale,  a  great,  restless,  persevering  mind  at  her  head  was 
pushing  her  supremacy  upon  Court  and  nation.  She  felt  the 
influence,  and,  awakened  to  a  sense  of  her  divine  life  and 
powers,  would  be  enlarging  her  borders  and  not  let  the  nation 
rest.  To  be  sure,  the  Puritans  would  have  commenced  the 
fight  if  she  had  not ;  still  it  must  be  confessed  that,  as  matter 
of  fact,  the  Church  was  the  aggressive  party  at  this  period. 
Laud’s  resolute  determination  to  bring  Scotland  under  her 
yoke,  and  anyhow,  by  argument  or  by  force,  conquer  Presby¬ 
terianism,  was  the  real  origin,  and  his  ecclesiastical  journey  to 
Scotland  the  first  overt  act  of  the  war.  If  this  be  called  per¬ 
secution  we  cannot  help  it ;  the  fact,  whatever  it  be,  must  be 
confessed.  No  one  questioned  at  that  time  of  day  the  legiti¬ 
macy  of  employing  violence  for  the  promotion  of  religion ; 
persecution  was  the  theory  of  the  age,  as  it  had  been  of  ages 
preceding ;  minds  of  the  most  religious,  the  most  devotional, 
the  most  saintly  cast,  persecuted ;  Catholics,  Lutherans,  Pres¬ 
byterians,  Independents,  all  persecuted ;  to  force  a  belief  upon 
others  was  a  necessary  corollary  from  the  sincerity  of  your 
own,  and  only  indifference  could  afford  to  be  indulgent.  Our 
Articles,  as  the  offspring  of  the  age,  embrace  the  theory,  and  in 
giving  express  power  to  the  civil  sword,  in  the  province  eccle¬ 
siastical  as  well  as  temporal,  to  punish  the  stubborn  and  evil¬ 
doer,  schismatic  as  well  as  criminal,  admit  the  principle  of 


Lord  Strafford. 


65 


persecution  as  fully  and  clearly  as  ever  the  Church  of  Borne 
propounded  it.  Laud  was  compelled,  by  every  high  feeling 
and  sentiment  of  the  ecclesiastic  of  that  day,  to  propagate 
Episcopacy  if  he  could  at  the  sword’s  point ;  and  to  make  him 
as  much  a  respecter  of  the  rights  of  conscience  as  they  can ,  and 
soften  him  down  into  an  eighteenth-century  divine,  as  his 
biographers  have  done,  is  something  like  an  improved  version 
of  Othello,  which  would  make  him  kiss  his  wife  instead  of 
killing  her,  or  a  new  edition  of  Hamlet,  which  would  make 
him  marry  Ophelia,  and  continue  to  ornament  contentedly, 
instead  of  disturbing  so  sadly,  as  he  did,  the  Danish  court. 

The  first  news  of  the  outbreak  wound  up  Strafford’s  energy 
and  spirit  to  its  height.  It  came  suddenly  when  it  did  come, 
owing  to  Charles’s  habit,  borrowed  from  his  father,  of  keeping 
the  affairs  of  the  sister  country  separate,  and  confined  to  his 
Council  there  ;  but  a  moment  was  enough  to  convince  him  that 
it  was  no  little  matter.  “  Believe  it,  they  fly  high ,”  he  said ;  “  a 
storm  is  beginning;”  “ for  love  of  Christ  let  me  know  all.” 
Indignation,  contempt,  judicial  gravity,  pious  horror  alternated. 
The  barbarous  mutineers,  the  gallant  gospellers  !  Rouse  up  all ; 
contribute  your  last  farthing ;  break  shins  in  emulation ;  arm 
against  these  wicked,  sinful  men.  It  is  our  sins  that  have 
brought  the  trial  on  us  ;  let  us  not  fly  from  it  now  it  is  come. 
I  do  not  think  myself  too  good  to  die — statutum  est  semel. 
When  Charles  talked  of  going  to  Edinburgh  and  conciliating, 
“  it  went  as  cold  to  his  heart  as  lead.”  Beconciliation  indeed  ! 
think  not,  dream  not  of  it ;  fight  you  must,  till  the  Prayer- 
Book,  Episcopal  jurisdiction,  and  the  whole  ecclesiastical  system 
is  received. 

Strafford’s  enthusiasm  had  always  a  close  alliance  with 
cabinet  paper ;  the  next  moment  found  him  bent  intently  over 
his  Ordnance  maps,  and  the  speedy  result  was  a  decisive  and 
complete  plan  of  the  war,  which  he  transmitted  to  the  home 
government.  It  singularly  combined  determination  and  caution. 
Berwick,  Carlisle,  Leith,  and  Dumbarton  occupied  the  four 
corners  of  southern  Scotland  :  garrison  and  fortify  these  four 
corners,  he  said,  and  you  have  the  Lowlands  in  your  grasp, 
cut  off  from  communication  with  the  Highlands ;  Leith  gives 

M.E.-7.]  E 


66 


Lord  Strafford. 


you  the  command  of  Edinburgh.  When  you  have  done  this, 
and  blockaded  them  by  sea — wait.  Do  not  give  them  the  dis¬ 
tinction  of  a  battle ;  you  have  everything  to  lose  by  defeat, 
they  nothing;  and  you  want  time  for  yourselves — generals  are 
not  made  in  a  day.  “Watch  fast;  starve  them  out  of  their 
madness  into  their  right  wits.” 

The  general  plan  formed,  he  rushed  with  a  keen  scent  into 
his  favourite  details ;  and  what  addition  to  make  to  the  Irish 
army  was  the  next  step,  inasmuch  as  an  invasion  from  Scot¬ 
land  might  be  anticipated.  The  home  government  was  stingy, 
and  would  not  allow  more  than  a  certain  expenditure.  The 
ubiquity  of  horse  made  up  for  numbers  ;  400  were  equal  to  at 
least  1500  foot,  and  had  the  advantage  of  fewer  mouths  to  fill 
and  hacks  to  cover.  He  decided  on  a  body  of  400  horse,  a 
tabular  prospectus  of  which — divided  into  cuirassiers  and  car¬ 
bines,  all  the  expenses  calculated  to  the  minutest  items — 
pistol,  head-piece,  gorget,  breast,  back,  short  taces,  sword  ;  pay 
of  captains,  lieutenants,  cornets,  corporals,  trumpets,  respec¬ 
tively  three  shillings,  two-and-twenty-pence-halfpenny,  eigh- 
teenpence  and  twelvepence  a  day — to  begin  from  Midsummer 
last  if  they  passed  muster  by  Martinmas  next,  with  other 
important  particulars — he  sent  up  for  the  approval  of  the 
home  government.  The  neat  proposal  took ;  the  addition  of 
the  400  horse  was  made,  and  Strafford  having  got  his  hand 
well  in,  went  on  enlarging  enormously.  The  Irish  army  of 
2000  foot  and  600  horse,  which  he  had  found  ragged  and 
naked,  hungry  as  wolves,  and  pests  to  the  country,  had  been 
long  brought  into  thorough  condition ;  but  the  present  emer¬ 
gency  might  demand  any  day  an  increase,  for  which  provision 
should  be  made.  10,000  stand  of  foot,  1000  stand  of  horse, 
arms,  and  stores  of  gunpowder,  under  the  superintendence  of 
an  able  master  gunner  from  the  Low  Countries,  were  procured, 
and  only  waited  for  use ;  pikes  were  ready  for  any  number 
more,  and  Strafford  was  before  his  departure  at  the  head  of  an 
army  of  20,000  men. 

A  military  spirit  and  talent,  which  had  hitherto  worked 
underground  or  in  a  sphere  of  insignificance,  was  now  elicited 
to  the  full,  and  the  able  general  and  the  regimental  officer  were 


Lord  Strafford. 


6 1 


most  happily  combined.  One  little  troop  had  hitherto  supplied 
the  main  material  for  practice — the  Lord  Deputy’s  own  cuiras¬ 
siers.  All  the  army  came  under  occasional  reviews,  and  had 
their  field-days,  but  this  little  favourite  troop  of  100  horse,  by 
almost  daily  inspections,  had  been  brought  into  the  highest 
finish  and  discipline.  With  amusing  pride  and  self-com¬ 
placency  used  Strafford  to  boast  of  his  £6000  worth  stock  of 
armour,  saddles  and  bridles,  which  formed  the  inexhaustible 
resources  of  his  troop,  the  gratuitous  purchase  of  their  captain 
out  of  his  private  purse,  where  former  Deputies  had,  on  the 
contrary,  preferred  pocketing  the  government  allowance,  and 
letting  the  men  go  bare.  And  with  the  self-congratulation  of 
the  officer  was  coupled  the  shrewd  remark  of  the  Lord  Deputy, 
that  he  could  at  an  hour’s  notice  put  himself  at  the  head  of  a 
body-guard  which  would  enforce  any  order  of  Council  in  any 
part  of  Ireland. 

After  the  little  chef-d'oeuvre  which  had  furnished  all  the 
advantage  of  the  most  extended  experience,  Strafford  did  not 
raise  his  army  without  attending  to  their  discipline.  Scatter¬ 
ing  his  commands  with  firework  briskness  on  all  sides,  he 
made  the  officers  not  only  attend  personally  to  the  inspection 
of  the  troops,  but  actually  learn  the  meanest  exercises  of  the 
common  soldiers.  Even  Lord  Clifford,  his  lieutenant  in  the 
north  of  England,  was  told  that  he  must  learn  how  to  use  the 
pike,  and  that  it  was  nonsense  his  thinking  of  being  a  general 
without  it.  “You  must  practise  the  pike,  my  Lord,  so  much  a 
day  ;  I  wish  I  was  at  your  elbow.”  “  Trust  no  eyes  but  your  own  ; 
do  nothing  by  proxy  f  was  his  maxim  to  officers.  Proxy  was 
fatal  to  effectiveness,  the  very  palsy  of  the  public  service, 
“  which  cast  the  soul  of  all  action  into  a  dead  sleep.”  Officers 
who  were  above  their  work  were  very  speedily  sent  adrift ; 
and  he  battled  vehemently  with  the  home  government  for  the 
appointments  in  his  own  army,  and  would  not  submit  to  their 
forcing  mere  men  of  family  and  interest  upon  him.  Mr.  Max¬ 
well,  son-in-law  of  Lord  Kirkcudbright,  a  tiro,  a  fop,  and 
Covenanter,  came  with  an  appointment  in  his  pocket  from 
Secretary  Windebanke.  The  saucy  gallant,  the  poor,  sneaking 
Anabaptist,  was  kicked  football- wise  back  again.  And  so  bent 


68 


Lord  Strafford. 


was  he  on  setting  an  officer-like  example  himself,  that  when 
he  sent  a  reinforcement  of  horse  to  the  royal  army  in  England, 
unable  to  move  from  sickness  and  exhaustion,  he  was  carried 
to  the  field  of  review  day  after  day  till  their  embarkation. 

He  was  interrupted  in  his  plans,  as  usual,  by  a  wretched 
sidelong  scheme  of  the  home  government,  which  threatened  to 
take  out  of  his  grasp  all  the  military  resources  he  had  collected. 
Ulster  was  the  chief  point  to  which  his  preparations  were 
directed.  The  Scotch,  who  abounded  there,  and  were  the  class 
in  station  and  opulence,  carried  on  constant  communication 
with  their  kinsmen  across  the  water ;  they  were  becoming 
daily  more  wild  and  unmanageable,  and  the  province  bordering 
on  a  hostile  movement.  Leslie,  Bishop  of  Down,  wielded  the 
ecclesiastical  sword  with  spirit  in  his  diocese,  and  harassed 
them  with  censures.  They  resisted,  rioted  and  bearded  the 
Bishop  in  his  own  court ;  even  the  sheriffs  refused  to  execute 
his  writs.  A  letter  from  Leslie  brought  Strafford’s  pursuivants 
in  a  trice  from  Dublin,  who  corrected  matters.  The  Bishop’s 
hands  were  effectually  strengthened,  and  the  Scotch  through¬ 
out  Ulster  compelled,  sore  against  the  grain,  to  subscribe  a 
formal  declaration  disavowing  the  Covenant. 

O 

The  Earl  of  Antrim,  a  nobleman  of  large  family  connec¬ 
tions  but  broken  fortunes  in  the  northern  corner  of  Ulster,  had 
a  hereditary  feud  with  the  house  of  Argyll,  his  opposite  neigh¬ 
bour  on  the  Scotch  coast,  and  a  long-standing  claim  to  a  part 
of  the  insular  domains  of  that  house  which  was  not  yet  settled. 
He  took  advantage  of  the  present  posture  of  affairs  with 
respect  to  Scotland  to  assume  the  patriot,  and  solicited  and 
obtained  the  King’s  leave  to  raise  an  army  for  the  purpose  of 
invading  the  opposite  coast.  Charles,  judging  from  a  distance, 
was  not  sorry  to  turn  a  domestic  quarrel  to  public  account,  and 
anticipate,  by  an  offensive  step,  a  Scotch  invasion  of  Ulster. 
But  Strafford  knew  more  of  the  Earl’s  resources  and  intentions. 
It  was  ridiculous,  he  told  the  government,  to  expect  that  man, 
who  had  only  £6000  a  year,  and  was,  to  his  certain  knowledge, 
£50,000  in  debt,  could  furnish  or  maintain  an  army.  The 
expenses  would  infallibly  fall  on  the  revenue ;  and  if  so,  the 
King,  if  he  chose  to  undertake  the  scheme,  might  as  well  have 


Lord  Strafford. 


69 


his  own  general  to  conduct  his  own  army,  as  give  it  gratui¬ 
tously  to  Lord  Antrim.  “  Above  all,”  he  continued,  “  I  am 
astonished  at  his  Lordship’s  purpose  of  putting  these  men  under 
the  command  of  Colonel  Neale,  understood  to  be  in  his  heart 
and  affections  a  traitor,  bred  no  other,  egg  and  bird,  as  they 
say.  And  I  beseech  you,  imagine  what  a  comfortable  prospect 
it  would  be  for  all  us  English  here  to  see  6000  men,  armed 
with  our  own  weapons  (ourselves  by  that  means  turned  naked), 
led  by  that  colonel,  under  the  command  of  Tyrone’s  grandchild, 
the  son  of  old  Eandy  Macdonnel  in  the  same  county,  formerly 
the  very  heart  and  strength  of  those  mighty  long-lasting  rebel¬ 
lions.”  This  plain,  straightforward  view  of  the  matter  made 
no  impression,  however.  Lord  Antrim  received  his  commis¬ 
sion,  and  summoned  instantly  the  O’Neals,  the  O’Haras,  the 
O’Lurgans,  the  Macgennises,  the  MacGfuiers,  the  MacMahons, 
the  MacDonnels — “  as  many  Oes  and  Macs,”  says  Strafford, 
“  as  would  startle  a  whole  Council  board.”  He  flourished  his 
baton  and  unfurled  the  banner  of  war  before  the  assembly  of 
his  clansmen,  and  then  the  poor,  weak,  silly,  helpless  man, 
who  had  never  looked  an  inch  before  him,  came  to  ask  Straf¬ 
ford’s  advice  what  to  do.  The  unfortunate  victim  had  brought 
his  own  nose  to  the  grindstone,  and  it  suffered  a  most  merciless 
reiteration  of  rubs.  Strafford,  wTith  refined  cruelty,  determined 
to  enjoy  himself  thoroughly  at  the  poor  man’s  expense,  and 
declared  himself  at  the  outset  far  too  humble,  too  conscious  of 
his  own  inability,  to  suppose  that  any  advice  of  his  would  be 
of  service. 

“  Albeit,  considering  not  only  his  reputation,  but  the  weight  of 
his  Majesty’s  counsels,  the  lives  of  his  subjects,  and  the  good  of  his 
affairs  might  be  all  deeply  concerned  in  this  action,  I  should  be 
bold  to  offer  a  few  thoughts  of  my  own,  which  might  at  hereafter 
(as  should  seem  best  to  himself)  by  his  wisdom  be  disposed  and 
mastered  for  his  own  honour,  and  advantage  of  his  Majesty’s 
service. 

“  I  desired  to  know  what  provision  of  victual  his  Lordship  had 
thought  of,  which  for  so  great  a  number  would  require  a  great  sum 
of  money  1 

“  His  Lordship  said  he  had  not  made  any  at  all,  in  regard  he 
conceived  they  should  find  sufficient  in  the  enemy’s  country  to 


70 


Lord  Strafford. 

sustain  them ;  only  his  Lordship  proposed  to  transport  over  with 
him  ten  thousand  live  cows  to  furnish  them  with  milk,  which,  he 
affirmed,  had  been  his  grandfather  Tyrone’s  plan. 

“  I  told  his  Lordship  that  seemed  to  me  a  great  adventure  to 
put  himself  and  friends  upon ;  for  in  case,  as  was  most  likely,  the 
Earl  of  Argyle  should  draw  all  the  cattle  and  corn  into  places  of 
strength,  and  lay  the  remainder  waste,  how  would  he  in  so  bare  a 
country  feed  either  his  men,  his  horses,  or  his  cows  h  And  then  I 
besought  him  to  foresee  what  a  misery  and  dishonour  it  would  be 
for  him  to  engage  his  friends  where  they  were  not  to  fight,  but 
starve. 

“To  that  his  Lordship  replied  they  should  do  well  enough; 
feed  their  horses  with  leaves  of  trees  and  themselves  with 
shamrocks. 

“To  this  I  craved  leave  to  inform  his  Lordship,  I  had  heard 
there  were  no  trees  in  the  isles  ;  but  if  trees,  as  yet  no  leaves, — so 
no  such  pressing  haste  to  transport  his  army,  for  that  the  season 
of  the  year  would  give  him  yet  one  or  two  months’  time  of  con¬ 
sideration  in  that  respect. 

“  We  went  on  in  the  discourse — his  Lordship  had,  at  any  rate, 
but  satisfied  the  proposition  in  part.  I  did  therefore  crave  to 
know  what  provision  of  victual  his  Lordship  had  given  order  for, 
during  the  time  those  eight  thousand  foot  and  three  hundred 
horse  abode  on  this  side  ?  Since  that  in  all  probability  less  than 
two  months  will  not  be  spent  in  teaching  his  soldiers  the  use 
of  their  arms,  in  shipping  his  men,  his  ammunition,  his  horses,  his 
ten  thousand  live  cows,  and  other  their  baggage  :  they  were  the 
whilst  in  a  friend’s  country,  all  true  and  loyal  subjects  to  his 
Majesty ;  those  he  might  not  plunder  in  any  wise.  Then,  if  he 
had  not  victual  to  satisfy  their  hungry  bellies,  how  were  it  possible 
to  contain  them  either  from  mutiny  or  disbanding?  Again,  in 
case  the  wind  should  not  serve,  but  that  two  or  three  months  more 
run  up  before  the  arms  or  the  shipping  could  be  brought  to  trans¬ 
port  him ;  or  say  by  misaccident  they  should  be  cast  away,  what 
means  had  his  Lordship  in  store  to  pass  that  time  until  he  were 
supplied  of  those  necessaries  ? 

“  To  this  was  answered  his  Lordship  had  not  considered  of  that; 
nevertheless,  I  humbly  advised  his  Lordship  should  not  altogether 
lay  it  forth  of  mind,  but  cast  up  what  victual  at  sixpence  a  day  for 
eight  thousand  foot,  or  at  one  shilling  and  sixpence  for  three 
hundred  horse,  might  come  to  for  two  or  three  months,  and  pro¬ 
vide  accordingly. 

“  Next  I  craved  to  know,  when  the  men  were  brought  together, 
what  officers  he  had  chosen  to  exercise,  instruct,  and  lead  them  1 


Lord  Strafford.  7 1 

I  made  bold  also  to  question  what  proportion  of  powder,  bullet 
and  match,  what  ordnance,  with  all  sorts  of  ammunition,  and  other 
necessary  implements,  what  shovels,  mattocks,  spades,  etc.  etc.  I 
desired  to  be  informed  whether  he  had  thought  of  any  plan  of 
landing — ” 

And  so  on.  Strafford  dragged  his  victim  through  one  tor¬ 
turing  query  after  another.  To  each  and  to  all  his  Lordship 
had  nothing  to  say ;  he  had  thought  of  nothing,  had  not  an 
idea  in  his  head  as  to  any  one  particular  that  he  had  to  do  ; 
and  at  the  end  of  an  interview  conducted  with  the  profoundest 
courtesy  and  respect  on  the  interrogator’s  part,  he  stood  before 
Strafford  a  miserable  confessed  simpleton.  The  result  natur¬ 
ally  was  a  very  strong  and  decided  desire,  a  determination 
on  his  Lordship’s  side  to  be  well  quit  of  the  whole  undertaking; 
and  with  that  view  he  dodged  and  dodged,  but  his  polite  per¬ 
secutor  still  confronted  him.  He  would  fain  have  got  credit¬ 
ably  off  by  dint  of  enormous  and  extortionate  demands  on  the 
government  magazines,  which  he  knew  could  not  possibly  be 
met.  Strafford,  resolved  that  the  failure  of  the  scheme  should 
rest  entirely  with  him,  was  ready,  most  complacently  ready,  to 
supply  anything.  Antrim  went  on  adding  and  adding,  horses, 
arms,  ammunition  ;  the  Irish  magazines  continued  obstinately 
inexhaustible ;  and  at  last  the  truth  came  out,  plain  and 
acknowledged,  which  it  had  been  Strafford’s  object  to  extract — 
his  Lordship  had  no  money,  and  could  not  support  an  army ;  his 
only  design  was  to  make  himself  a  general  and  all  his  relations 
officers  at  the  government  expense,  and  use  the  royal  army  to 
add  some  three  or  four  Scotch  isles  to  his  own  private  estate. 
Strafford  saved  his  magazines  ;  but  to  have  to  spend  such  exer¬ 
tions  in  correcting  the  mistakes  of  the  home  government  was 
hard ;  the  interference  of  the  latter  was  always  an  awkward 
interloper,  a  note  out  of  time  in  his  schemes. 

Meantime  affairs  in  England  were  proceeding  miserably ; 
and  the  royal  army,  of  six  thousand  horse  and  six  thousand 
foot,  under  Lords  Arundel,  Essex,  and  Holland,  doing  nothing. 
Strafford’s  plan  of  the  war  was  adopted,  but  not  an  effort 
made  to  carry  it  out.  Berwick  and  Carlisle  remained  without 
garrisons ;  Dumbarton  with  but  a  poor  one  ;  the  Scotch  gained 


Lord  Strafford. 


*7  2 
/  z 

confidence  at  the  sight.  Dumbarton  fell ;  its  fall  knocked 
Strafford’s  complete  scheme  on  the  head ;  and  then  Berwick 
and  Carlisle  were  at  last  garrisoned ;  the  former,  however,  by 
Strafford’s  own  Irish  troops :  he  had  to  be  designer  and 
executor  as  well. 

The  first  plan  destroyed,  another  quickly  followed  to  meet 
the  change  of  circumstances.  Keep  fast  hold  of  Berwick  and 
Carlisle,  he  said  ;  the  Scotch  when  they  invade  will  either  pass 
them  by,  and  have  a  foe  at  their  back,  or  by  taking  them 
throw  odium  upon  their  cause  in  England.  But  you  cannot 
afford  to  take  the  high  quiet  line  ;  you  are  no  longer  the 
besiegers  but  the  besieged,  and  must  try  a  sally  to  recover 
your  credit :  march  down  your  horse  rapidly  to  Edinburgh, 
fire  their  corn-fields  before  their  eyes,  and  then  back  again, 
leaving  them  to  fight  it  out  with  cleanness  of  teeth.  Don’t 
hazard  a  regular  battle.  The  wretched  answer  to  this  stirring 
appeal  was  Lord  Holland’s  disgraceful  and  inexplicable  retreat 
from  Dunse,  and  the  rapid  advance  of  the  victorious  Scotch 
army,  under  General  Leslie,  to  the  Border.  The  pacification 
followed,  which  raised  the  credit  of  the  Scotch  in  the  eyes  of 
their  allies,  France  and  Cardinal  Richelieu,  and  brought  their 
smooth  tongues  into  play  upon  whole  masses  of  undecided 
English  politicians.  A  hollow  peace  ill  concealed  the  dark 
working  of  the  volcano  below.  A  Parliament  met ;  the  whole 
trick  of  the  pacification  was  discovered,  and  the  traitorous  cor¬ 
respondence  of  the  Scotch  with  Richelieu  brought  to  light  and 
proclaimed  ;  the  war  began  afresh  ;  a  new  army  marched  to 
the  north ;  and  Strafford  was  sent  for  from  Ireland  to  con¬ 
duct  it. 

It  was  at  the  end  of  March  1640  that  Strafford  received 
the  summons  which  placed  him  at  the  head  of  the  English 
army,  and  called  him  like  the  Roman  victor  to  the  crown 
before  the  axe.  The  cruel  and  ominous  justice,  which  even 
the  brute  force  of  events  compels  to  commanding  intellect  and 
character,  lifted  him  up  before  his  fall ;  and  higher  and  higher 
rose  the  pallid  black  countenance,  and  rode  in  ghastly  triumph 
on  the  summit  of  the  fatal  wave  from  which  the  next  moment 
engulfed  it  in  the  abyss.  His  first  act  was  to  send  away  his 


Lord  Strafford. 


73 


children,  the  hardest  trial  yet  passed  through.  They  had  been 
his  only  consolation,  his  only  recreation  amidst  the  labours  of 
office  ;  and  to  watch  with  pleasure  how  Nan  took  after  her 
mother,  and  Arabella  took  after  Nan,  and  hear  how  prettily 
they  talked  French,  was  a  great  delight.  And  “  Nan  too,  they 
tell  me,  danceth  prettily.”  This  little  lady  was  a  perfect 
little  Strafford  ;  while  her  father  s  mansion  was  rebuilding,  she 
was  exceedingly  vexed  when  it  rained  one  day ;  she  could  not 
be  out  of  doors  to  superintend  the  work,  and  except  little 
Mistress  Nan,  just  three  years  old,  superintended,  it  could  not 
go  on  for  certain.  Kadcliffe  knew  what  would  please  Strafford 
when  he  told  him  this  trait  of  Mistress  Nan.  With  prayers 
and  blessings  he  sent  them  away  to  their  grandmother  Lady 
Clare,  and  prepared  to  obey  the  royal  mandate. 

The  announcement  found  him  in  a  state  of  utter  weakness 
and  exhaustion,  which  the  paroxysm  of  a  severe  stomach 
disorder  had  left ;  just  allowing  himself  time  to  make  the 
necessary  arrangements  for  carrying  on  the  government  in  his 
absence,  he  hastened  to  embark.  A  litter  conveyed  him — a 
miserable  helpless  body,  but  a  mind,  glowing  with  portentous 
energy  and  living  fire — to  the  shore.  The  sea  was  tempestuous, 
and  the  captain  declared  it  positively  unsafe  to  set  out.  With 
feverish  impatience  he  drove  captain  and  sailors  on  board,  and 
a  stormy  and  hazardous  voyage  landed  them  at  Chester.  The 
motion  of  the  sea  was  too  much  for  so  distempered  a  frame  ; 
at  Chester  the  gout  took  hold  of  his  other  foot,  and  what  with 
the  shaking,  under  which  his  nerves  still  quivered,  and  the 
torture  of  the  pain,  a  literal  inability  to  endure  motion  com¬ 
pelled  him  to  take  one  short  rest ;  but  long  before  he  was  in 
travelling  condition  he  resumed  his  journey.  Laud  in  alarm 
for  his  life  procured  a  mandate  from  the  King’s  own  hand 
commanding  him  to  stop  at  Chester,  and  nurse  a  health  which 
was  of  vital  consequence  to  the  public  cause.  Strafford 
received  it  at  Lichfield,  and  answered  it  from  Coventry. 
“  Your  Majesty’s  least  thought  is  of  more  value  than  such  an 
inconsiderable  creature  as  I  am,  but  of  your  abundant  grace  it 
is  that  you  thus  vouchsafe  me  far  more  than  I  deserve.  By 
the  help  of  a  litter  I  am  gotten  thus  far,  and  shall,  by  these 


74 


Lord  Strafford . 


short  journeys  my  weakness  will  I  trust  be  able  to  bear,  reach 
London  by  the  beginning  of  next  week.” 

From  London  he  continued  his  journey,  his  head  teeming 
with  schemes  for  the  approaching  campaign,  and  receiving  and 
writing  despatches  of  all  sorts.  Lerwick  and  Carlisle  and 
Newcastle,  the  Scotch  seas,  the  Clyde,  and  Dumbarton, — arms, 
ammunition,  and  exchequer  bills, — hypocritical  covenanting 
commissioners  and  insolent  Yorkshire  deputy-lieutenants, — 
passed  through  and  through  the  racked  brains  of  the  sufferer, 
as  his  litter  conveyed  him  by  slow  stages  to  York.  While  on 
the  road  he  sent  spies  to  examine  the  state  and  numbers  of 
the  Scotch  camp  beyond  the  border,  and  the  result  of  the 
intelligence  was  a  command  to  Lord  Conway,  after  a  reproof 
for  his  indolence,  immediately  to  meet  the  Scotch,  who  were 
advancing  to  Hexham,  break  down  the  bridge  over  the  Tyne, 
and  there  oppose  their  passage.  Before  he  had  got  through 
half-a-dozen  lines,  or  could  explain  further,  a  violent  attack  of 
the  stone  disabled  him  from  writing,  and  with  an  abrupt 
“  Dear  my  lord,  do  something  worthy  of  yourself,”  the 
despatch  breaks  off. 

A  wearisome  toilsome  journey  at  last  brought  him  to  the 
English  camp,  and  then  his  mortification  was  complete  :  he 
arrived  just  to  hear  the  first  news  of  the  fatal  rout  of  Lord 
Conway  at  Newburn,  and  to  witness  an  army  in  the  worst 
state  of  degradation,  helplessness,  and  disorder.  Spirit  and 
hope  were  fled,  and  the  royal  cause  was  in  the  dust.  Straf¬ 
ford,  who  could  hardly  sit  on  his  saddle,  went  the  rounds,  and 
did  what  he  could.  The  officers,  however,  were  not  accus¬ 
tomed  to  act  under  strict  generals,  and  knew  not  what  discipline 
was ;  he  reprimanded,  assumed  a  high  tone,  called  them  to 
account,  and  told  them  their  duty ;  they  resented  it,  threatened, 
and  mutinied ;  the  Scotch  were  advancing  upon  an  army  with¬ 
out  strength  or  discipline,  and  Strafford  felt  himself  compelled 
to  retreat  to  York.  Yet  even  in  this  lowest  gloom,  a  revival 
under  his  auspices  began  to  dawn,  and  give  promise  of  a  bright 
and  glorious  day.  He  had  recommended  a  quick  manoeuvring 
line,  and  now  followed  it  himself.  An  opportunity  soon 
occurred  ;  he  despatched  a  party  of  horse  under  a  favourite 


Lord  Strafford. 


75 


officer,  to  surprise  the  Scotch  quarters  ;  and  a  large  body  of 
the  enemy  were  defeated,  and  their  officers  taken  prisoner. 
The  army  plucked  up  courage  ;  Strafford  had  shown  his  powers, 
his  influence  was  on  the  rise,  and  a  master  mind  would  soon 
have  been  at  home  in  its  new  sphere  ;  he  had  an  army  of 
20,000  men  in  Ireland  ready  to  cross  at  the  first  notice.  It 
seemed  the  beginning  of  a  splendid  career.  Alas !  it  was  his 
last,  his  expiring  act.  As  if  trembling  at  such  success,  Charles 
interposed,  and  Strafford  was  told  to  be  still  and  do  nothing. 

There  are  not  many  situations  in  which  great  minds 
genuinely  ask  for  our  pity,  but  this  is  one — compulsory  pas¬ 
siveness  and  impotency — when  a  man  longs  to  act  and  cannot, 
when  he  would  fain  raise  an  arm  and  an  outward  influence 
chains  up  every  sinew  ;  when  the  air  chokes  his  utterance, 
and  the  net  catches  his  steps,  and  he  is  compelled  to  be  a  log 
— this  deadlock  and  suffocation  is  a  misery  almost  for  tears. 
The  treaty  at  Eipon  was  already  begun ;  and  the  bare  enu¬ 
meration  of  the  English  Commissioners,  noblemen  of  the 
popular  party,  and  two  Strafford’s  personal  enemies,  Lords 
Holland  and  Savile,  stamped  its  character ;  it  announced 
“  Thorough”  discarded  and  disaffection  courted.  Things  were 
entirely  taken  out  of  Strafford’s  hands,  and  he  asked  leave  to 
return  to  Ireland.  He  had  good  reason  for  asking.  A  fresh 
Parliament  was  approaching,  and  the  names  of  himself  and 
Laud  were  written  in  characters  of  black  upon  its  journal. 
With  strange  and  most  cruelly  complimentary  infatuation, 
Charles  would  not  let  him  go.  Poor  Charles,  he  knew  not  yet 
the  extent  either  of  his  weakness  or  his  strength.  Perplexed 
and  indecisive  whether  to  go  forwards  or  backwards ;  afraid  to 
touch  the  mighty  spring  that  threatened  his  failing  nerves, 
once  touched  to  blow  up  all,  yet  wishing  to  have  it  near  him, 
should  he  ever  make  up  his  mind  and  come  to  the  point ;  he 
could  not,  amidst  his  distresses,  part  with  the  mock  charm  and 
palladium  of  a  great  minister  from  his  side,  or  deny  himself 
amidst  a  crowd  of  hollow  counsellors  the  comforting  sight  of  an 
honest  man.  He  clung  to  him  as  a  drowning  man  does  to  the 
too  generous  swimmer,  who  with  arms  fast  locked  and  entwined 
can  only  bear  his  sinking  burden  to  the  bottom.  Sad  melan- 


?6 


Lord  Strafford. 


choly  journey,  which  brought  from  York  to  London  Charles 
and  Strafford  to  that  last  deplorable  scene,  where  a  monarch 
abandoned  his  preserver  to  death !  Chained  captives  of  an 
unseen  hostile  triumph,  in  prophetic  politician’s  eye,  no  fallen 
kings  ever  marched  more  downcast  through  gazing  avenues  to 
the  Capitol ;  and  the  saddened  royalist’s  imagination  saw 
nature  drooping,  and  heard  ominous  birds  and  moaning  winds 
as  the  mournful  funeral  line  passed  along. 

The  Parliament  of  1640  opened,  and  the  crisis  commenced  ; 
a  group  of  resolute  powerful  heads  in  the  Lower  House  saw 
their  game  before  them.  Four  men,  Pym,  Hampden,  St.  John, 
and  Vane,  led  the  opposition — formidable  men,  were  it  only 
from  the  force  of  their  political  animosity,  now  brought  to  a 
head.  How  or  never  was  the  time  for  Pym  to  remember  the 
fatal  words  on  Greenwich  pier ;  and  of  all  men  that  lived  he 
wras  not  the  one  to  forget  them.  Sturdy,  experienced,  and  self- 
possessed,  he  was  surpassed  however  by  his  brethren  in  talent, 
as  he  was  an  improvement  on  them  in  character.  Profound 
subtle  dissimulation  marked  Hampden  and  Vane.  Hampden, 
of  a  modest  slippery  address,  had  a  knack  of  approving  his 
designs  to  other  people  under  the  disguise  of  their  own  sugges¬ 
tions  to  himself,  which  told  remarkably  in  sapping  the  minds 
that  came  in  contact  with  him.  Vane,  after  a  riotous  gentle¬ 
man-commoner’s  career  at  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  which 
the  good  tutors  of  that  society,  we  are  told,  were  not  able  to 
check — as  they  have  sometimes  failed  on  similar  occasions 
since, — a  career  succeeded  by  a  conversion  or  Genevan  twist, 
which  took  him  a  dreaming  enthusiast  and  busybody  to  New 
England,  had  ultimately  reposed  in  the  more  secular  character 
of  a  cool  designing  and  a  factious  democrat  at  home.  He  too 
had  a  family  grudge  against  Strafford.  St.  John  combined  the 
shrewd  lawyer  and  the  dark  glooming  Puritan,  and  ever  since 
one  particular  scene  in  which  he  had  figured  before  the  Star 
Chamber,  had  borne  a  mortal  grudge  to  the  Church. 

At  the  nod  of  these  sinister  four,  who  occupied  with  magi¬ 
cian  scowl  the  upper  region  of  political  strife,  moved  an 
infuriated  mob  below,  wild  with  fanaticism,  and  ripe  for 
excesses.  The  Church  of  St.  Antholin,  appropriated  by 


government  to  the  nse  of  the  Scotch  Commission,  was  filled 
with  crowds,  especially  women,  that  swallowed  with  rapture 
the  insipid  extravagances  of  Alexander  Henderson  ;  even  the 
windows  outside  were  besieged,  and  the  fortunate  ones  inside 
ate  their  dinners  there  :  an  atmosphere  of  suffocation,  and  the 
flaming  Presbyterian  harangues,  heated  the  body  and  mad¬ 
dened  the  brain  from  morning  to  night.  The  contagion 
spread ;  two  thousand  Brownists  rioted  and  tore  up  the  benches 
in  the  consistory  of  St.  Paul’s  as  the  Court  of  High  Commis¬ 
sion  was  sitting ;  and  a  raging  mob,  with  cries  for  the  Arch¬ 
bishop’s  blood,  attacked  the  palace  at  Lambeth.  Burton, 
Prynne,  and  Bastwick  were  brought  up  to  be  the  idols  of 
adoring  crowds.  The  wealthy  London  citizens,  leavened  with 
Puritanism,  and  exasperated  with  some  sharp  contemptuous 
expressions  of  Strafford’s,  joined  themselves  to  the  cry.  The 
merest  ebullitions  of  irritation,  the  gibe  and  the  joke,  were 
gravely  heightened  into  schemes  of  barbarism.  Strafford  had 
been  heard  to  say,  on  some  occasion  of  disturbance,  that  the 
Londoners  would  never  learn  good  behaviour  till  some  of  the 
aldermen  were  hanged  :  and  no  matter  now  that  he  could 
appeal  to  a  whole  career  in  Ireland,  notwithstanding  its  rigour 
and  determination,  unstained,  absolutely  unstained,  by  blood, 
the  speech  was  brought  up.  He  declared,  and  we  believe  him, 
that  he  never  remembered  it ;  but  it  clove  to  the  memory  of 
Mr.  Alderman  Garroway — “  Indeed,  my  Lord,  you  did  say  sol 
A  more  terrible  opponent  still,  as  Clarendon  tells  us,  the 
whole  Scottish  nation,  represented  now  by  their  Commission 
in  London,  called  for  vengeance  upon  their  “  mortal  foe  ;  ”  and 
the  influence  of  a  subtle  nation,  coming  into  contact  with  all 
classes,  and  acting  in  the  very  centre  and  thick  of  affairs,  was 
felt  everywhere ;  through  every  vein  and  artery  of  the  nation 
penetrated  the  mercurial  Scotch  element,  and  rottenness 
marked  its  spread ;  untrue  hearts  blackened,  and  feeble  ones 
turned  to  pallor.  The  Commission  were  in  deep  communica¬ 
tion  with  the  leaders  of  the  House,  and  two  strong  sets  of 
heads  cemented  a  plot  which  did  full  credit  to  its  designers  : 
death  for  Strafford,  and  the  first  step  to  accomplish  it  an 
immediate  arrest.  Ho  more  effective  beginning  could  have 


78 


Lord  Strafford \ 


been  made  than  this, — beginning,  middle,  and  end  in  one. 
“  Stone-dead  hath  no  fellow  ”  was  the  word,  and  the  sharp 
scent  of  the  bloodhound,  with  that  deep  cunning  which  is  the 
inspiration  of  vile  natures,  led  them  instinctively  the  shortest 
way  to  work.  Strafford  at  large,  and  acquiring  personal 
iufluence,  while  a  dilatory  debating  House  was  preparing  its 
charges,  was  destruction  to  the  scheme.  A  word  and  a  blow, 
and  the  blow  first,  was  clearly  the  only  policy  ;  cage  your 
man  first,  and  get  up  your  case  afterwards.  Once  in  prison  a 
blow  was  struck,  a  fact  gained  ;  Strafford  the  culprit  was  no 
longer  the  same  Strafford  to  King  or  country  that  he  had 
been  ;  the  spell  of  victory  and  power  which  hung  around 
his  i  person  was  gone,  and  antagonist  force  was  de  facto 
master. 

Strafford  came  up  to  town  late  on  Monday,  rested  on 
Tuesday,  came  to  Parliament  on  Wednesday,  and  that  very 
night  was  in  the  Tower.  The  Lower  House  closed  their  doors, 
and  the  Speaker  kept  the  keys  till  the  debate  was  over,  when 
Pym,  attended  by  a  number  of  members,  went  up  to  the 
Upper  House,  and  in  a  short  speech  accused,  in  the  name  of 
the  Commons  of  England,  Thomas  Earl  of  Strafford,  and  Lord- 
Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  of  high  treason.  The  sudden  step 
astounded  the  Lords  :  word  went  to  Strafford,  who  was  just 
then  closeted  with  the  King;  he  returned  instantly  to  the 
House,  called  loudly  at  the  door  for  Maxwell  (Keeper  of 
the  Black  Eod)  to  open,  and  with  firm  step  and  proudly 
darkened  countenance,  marched  straight  up  to  his  place  at 
the  board  head.  A  host  of  voices  immediately  forced  him  to 
the  door  again.  The  consultation  over,  he  was  called  back 
and  stood  before  the  House.  “  Kneel,  kneel/"  he  was  told ;  he 
knelt,  and  on  his  knees  was  delivered  into  the  custody  of  the 
Black  Rod,  to  be  a  prisoner  till  cleared  of  the  Commons"  charges. 
He  offered  to  speak,  but  was  commanded  to  be  gone  without  a 
word.  The  Black  Rod  bore  off  his  great  charge,  and  ap¬ 
parently  felt  his  importance  on  the  occasion.  “  In  the  outer 
room,”  says  Baillie,  “James  Maxwell  required  him,  as  a 
prisoner,  to  give  up  his  sword.  When  he  had  got  it  he  cried 
with  a  loud  voice  for  his  man  to  carry  my  Lord-Lieutenant’s 


Lord  Strafford. 


79 


sword.  This  done,  he  makes  through  a  number  of  people 
towards  his  coach,  all  gazing,  no  man  capping  to  him  before 
whom  that  morning  the  greatest  of  England  would  have  stood 
discovered  ;  all  crying,  ‘  What  is  the  matter  ?  ’  He  said,  ‘  A 
small  matter,  I  warrant  you/  They  replied,  ‘  Yes,  indeed, 
high  treason  is  a  small  matter/  Coming  to  the  place  where 
he  expected  his  coach,  it  was  not  there;  so  he  behoved  to 
return  that  same  way,  through  a  world  of  gazing  people. 
When  at  last  he  found  his  coach  and  was  entering,  James 
Maxwell  told  him,  ‘  Your  Lordship  is  my  prisoner,  and  must 
go  in  my  coach/  ”  This  great  step  taken,  the  Commons  were 
all  activity.  Pursuivants  despatched  to  Ireland  and  the  North 
sounded  the  trumpet,  and  summoned  all  who  had  any  com¬ 
plaint  against  the  Lord  Deputy  and  President  to  appear  at 
the  approaching  trial.  Strafford  was  busily  employed  with 
his  counsel  in  the  Tower  preparing  his  defence. 

Four  months  passed,  and  the  two  sides  met  to  encounter 
in  the  court  of  justice,  before  they  tried  their  strength  at 
Marston  Moor  and  Worcester.  On  the  21st  of  March,  West¬ 
minster  Hall,  railed  and  platformed,  and  benched  and 
scaffolded  up  to  the  roof,  showed  an  ascending  crowd  of 
heads, — -judges,  lawyers,  peers  of  Parliament,  Scotch  commis¬ 
sioners,  aggrieved  gentlemen  from  the  North,  incensed  Irish 
lords ;  the  look  of  strife,  of  curiosity,  and  here  and  there  of 
affection  and  pity,  turned  in  the  excitement  of  the  opening 
trial,  on  the  illustrious  prisoner.  From  a  high  scaffold  at  the 
north  end,  an  empty  throne  looked  disconsolately  over  the 
scene,  a  chair  for  the  Prince  on  one  side  of  it,  which  he  occu¬ 
pied  during  the  proceedings.  “  Before  it  ” — the  accurate  and 
characteristic  account  of  an  eye-witness  shall  continue  the 
description — “  lay  a  large  woolsack,  covered  with  green,  for 
my  Lord  Steward,  the  Earl  of  Arundel.  Beneath  it  lay  two 
other  sacks  for  the  Lord  Keeper  and  the  judges,  with  the  rest  of 
the  Chancery,  all  in  their  red  robes.  Beneath  this,  a  little  table 
for  four  or  five  clerks  of  the  Parliament,  in  their  black  gowns. 
Pound  about  these  some  forms  covered  with  green  frieze, 
whereupon  the  earls  and  lords  did  sit  in  their  red  robes  of  the 
same  fashion,  lined  with  the  same  white  ermine  skin,  as  ye  see 


8o 


Lord  Strafford. 


the  robes  of  our  lords  when  they  ride  to  Parliament ;  the 
lords,  on  their  right  sleeves,  having  two  bars  of  white  skins ; 
the  viscounts,  two  and  a  half ;  the  earls,  three ;  the  Marquis 
of  Winchester,  three  and  a  half.  England  hath  no  more 
marquises,  and  he  but  a  late  upstart,  a  creature  of  Queen 
Elizabeth.  Hamilton  goes  here  but  among  the  earls,  and  that 
a  late  one.  Dukes  they  have  none  in  Parliament ;  York, 
Eichmond,  and  Buckingham  are  but  boys ;  Lennox  goes 
among  the  late  earls.  Behind  the  forms,  where  the  lords  sit, 
there  is  a  bar  covered  with  green.  At  the  one  end  stands  the 
committee  of  eight  or  ten  gentlemen  appointed  by  the  House  of 
Commons  to  pursue.  At  the  midst  there  is  a  little  desk, 
where  the  prisoner  Strafford  stands  and  sits  as  he  pleases, 
together  with  his  keeper,  Sir  William  Balfour,  the  Lieutenant 
of  the  Tower.  This  is  the  order  of  the  House  below  on  the 
floor;  the  same  that  is  used  daily  in  the  higher  House.  Upon 
the  two  sides  of  the  House,  east  and  west,  there  arose  a  stage 
of  eleven  ranks  of  forms,  the  highest  almost  touching  the  roof ; 
every  one  of  these  forms  went  from  the  one  end  of  the  room  to 
the  other,  and  contained  about  forty  men ;  the  two  highest 
were  divided  from  the  rest  by  a  rail,  and  a  rail  at  every  end 
cut  off  some  seats.  The  gentlemen  of  the  Lower  House  sat 
within  the  rails,  others  without.  All  the  doors  were  kept 
very  straitly  with  guards.  We  always  behoved  to  be  there 
a  little  after  five  in  the  morning.  Lord  Willoughby,  Earl  of 
Lindsey,  Lord  Chamberlain  of  England  (Pembroke  is  Chamber- 
lain  of  the  Court),  ordered  the  House  with  great  difficulty. 
James  Maxwell,  Black  Eod,  was  great  usher;  a  number  of 
other  servants,  gentlemen  and  knights,  assisted.  The  House 
was  full  daily  before  seven ;  the  Lords,  in  their  robes,  were  set 
about  eight.  The  King  was  usually  half  an  hour  before  them. 
He  came  not  into  his  throne,  for  that  would  have  marred  the 
action ;  for  it  is  the  order  of  England,  when  the  King  appears, 
he  speaks  what  he  will,  but  no  other  speaks  in  his  presence. 
At  the  back  of  the  throne  were  two  rooms  on  the  two  sides. 
In  the  one,  Duke  de  Vanden,  Duke  de  Yaller,  and  other 
Erench  nobles,  sat ;  in  the  other,  the  King,  Queen,  Princess 
Mary,  the  Prince  Elector,  and  other  Court  ladies.  The  tirlies, 


Lord  Strafford. 


8 1 


that  made  them  to  be  secret,  the  King  brake  down  with  his 
own  hands,  so  that  they  sat  in  the  eyes  of  all ;  but  little  more 
regarded  than  if  they  had  been  absent,  for  the  Lords  sat  all 
covered.  Those  of  the  Lower  House,  and  all  other,  except  the 
Trench  noblemen,  sat  discovered  when  the  Lords  came,  not 
else.  A  number  of  ladies  were  in  boxes  above  the  rails,  for 
which  they  paid  much  money.”  Private  persons  of  place  and 
distinction  were  admitted  to  place  among  the  Commons ;  one 
of  whom  was  Baillie,  Principal  of  the  University  of  Glasgow, 
and  one  of  the  Commissioners  from  Scotland,  from  whose 
letters  we  borrow  this  description.  By  the  force  of  a  clear, 
strong  mind,  the  intellectual  Scotchman  proceeds,  in  spite  of 
himself,  to  describe  in  Strafford  a  fallen  greatness,  before 
which  the  noisy  bustling  scene  sank  into  vulgarity ;  and 
while  his  hatred  of  the  champion  of  Church  and  King  is 
as  intense  as  ever,  his  intellect  bows  to  the  nobleness  and 
grandeur  of  the  man. 

At  eight  o’clock  the  lieutenant  and  a  guard  brought  up 
Strafford  in  a  barge  from  the  Tower  ;  the  Lord  Chamberlain 
and  Black  Pod  met  him  at  the  door  of  the  court.  On  his 
entrance  he  made  a  low  courtesy,  when  he  had  proceeded 
a  little  way  a  second,  and  on  coming  to  his  place  a  third  ; 
he  then  kneeled,  with  his  forehead  upon  his  desk,  rose  quickly, 
saluted  both  sides  of  the  court,  and  sat  down  ;  some  few  of  the 
Lords  lifted  their  hats  to  him.  Every  day  he  was  attired  in 
the  same  deep  suit  of  black.  Pour  secretaries  sat  at  a  desk 
just  behind  him,  whom  he  kept  busily  employed  reading  and 
writing,  arranging  and  handing  him  his  papers;  and  behind 
them  his  counsel,  five  or  six  able  lawyers,  who  were  not 
permitted  to  argue  upon  matters  of  fact,  but  only  on  points 
of  law. 

A  day  or  two  were  occupied  in  preambles  and  general 
statements,  and  a  declamatory  speech  from  Pym  gave  a  sketch 
of  all  the  charges  against  Strafford,  and  endeavoured  to  destroy 
all  the  merit  of  those  parts  of  his  administration  which  the 
accused  could  appeal  to.  He  had  paid  £100,000  indeed  of  the 
royal  debt,  and  left  another  £100,000  in  the  treasury,  but  all 
had  been  got  by  screwing  Parliaments  ;  he  had  augmented  the 

M.E.-I.]  p 


82 


Lord  Strafford. 


customs  greatly,  but  lie  had  done  it  solely  for  his  own  gain, 
and  he  had  added  a  large  property  to  the  Church,  but  he  had 
done  it  to  please  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  at  the 
expense  of  sundry  noblemen’s  and  gentlemen’s  private  estates, 
from  which,  though  it  had  originally  belonged  to  the  Church,  he 
had  no  right  to  abstract  it.  Strafford,  indeed,  had  done  more 
for  Ireland  than  all  the  Deputies  had  done  since  the  Conquest, 
and  much  more  than  a  hundred  generations  of  Pyms  would 
have  done  had  they  reigned  uninterruptedly  there  since  the 
Flood ;  and  he  was  bringing  the  country  rapidly  into  a 
state  of  unexampled  order  and  prosperity  :  but  Pym  did  not 
care  for  that ;  Pym  quite  turned  up  his  nose  at  that ;  Pym 
thought  that  did  not  signify  at  all ;  that  made  no  difference  at 
all  with  Pym.  How  much  better  would  it  have  been,  for 
example,  had  Ireland  had  a  sage  and  constitutional  governor 
like  Pym  ;  she  might  have  felt,  to  be  sure,  some  inconveniences, 
a  fallen  revenue,  a  decayed  commerce  ;  she  would  have  had, 
perhaps,  no  linen  manufactures,  no  shipping,  no  agriculture  ; 
but  then  she  would  have  had  the  pleasure  of  hearing  Pym 
make  constitutional  speeches,  and  she  would  have  heard  the 
rhetoric  of  the  mighty  Pym  expand  for  mortal  interminable 
hours  on  the  grand  theme  of  the  balance  and  adjustment  of 
the  three  powers  in  the  State. 

The  regular  business  of  the  court  followed  ;  twenty- eight 
charges  of  treason  and  maladministration  were  formally  pre¬ 
ferred  against  Strafford  ; — every  high  proceeding  and  act  of 
power,  every  harshness,  and  every  case  of  grievance  of  the 
subject,  noble  and  aristocratical,  that  they  thought  could  tell 
upon  the  court ;  all  the  knots  and  rough  spots  and  corners 
that  an  administration  of  unparalleled  activity  had  in  the  full 
swing  and  impetus  of  its  course  contracted,  were  brought  up, 
singly  and  isolatedly  enlarged  upon,  and  exhibited  in  the  very 
worst  colour.  Strafford  was  asserted  to  have  done  everything 
with  a  view  to  the  most  selfish  ends,  to  establish  his  own 
tyranny,  oppression,  and  extortion  ;  and  the  very  idea  of  a 
respectable  intention  in  what  he  did,  of  any  view  to  public 
good,  mistaken,  irregular,  as  they  might  think  it,  but  still  real, 
was  not  alluded  to.  Strafford  had  long  before  spoken  his 


Lord  Strafford. 


83 

answer  to  such  charges,  and  such  interpretations.  “  Where  I 
found  a  crown,  a  church ,  and  a  'people  spoiled ,”  he  said,  in  defend¬ 
ing  himself  before  the  English  Council,  “  I  could  not  imagine  to 
redeem  them  from  under  the  pressure  with  gracious  smiles  and 
gentle  looks ;  it  cost  warmer  water  than  so.”  He  now  suffered 
for  his  own  zeal  and  industry,  for  the  multiplicity  and  com¬ 
prehensive  range  of  his  administration ;  had  he  done  nothing, 
he  would  have  had  nothing  to  answer  for ;  but  his  inquiring 
glance  had  been  everywhere,  his  fingers  had  been  meddling 
everywhere ;  he  had  thrown  himself  wThole  into  the  eddying 
mass  of  a  disordered  country’s  affairs ;  he  had  worked  himself 
to  death’s  door,  and  therefore,  in  the  view  of  the  worthy  Pym 
and  his  associates,  he  was  now  helpless  :  that  endless  heap  of 
papers,  the  charge  and  burden  of  four  secretaries,  proud 
memorial  of  the  Deputy,  pain,  weariness,  and  perplexity  to  the 
prisoner  and  the  arraigned,  had  done  the  work,  and  question 
after  question  and  charge  upon  charge  must  settle  him.  The 
mere  idea  of  subjecting,  in  this  way,  bit  after  bit  of  a 
whole  course  of  government,  to  a  kind  of  popular  inquiry, 
contains  in  itself  the  strongest  element  of  injustice;  how  can 
the  context,  the  flow  of  events,  and  order  of  political  nature, 
which  makes  one  act  bring  on  another,  and  hooks  and  cements 
all  together, — how  can  the  moment  of  action  upon  doubtful 
evidence,  so  often  forced  on  a  ruler — the  subtle  conjecture  which 
justifies  to  self,  the  only  practical  mode  of  effecting  an  object 
under  circumstances — circumstances,  that  wide  idea  !  how  can 
postures  of  affairs,  groupings  of  facts,  the  look  of  things,  all  that 
common  eyes  simply  see  and  no  more,  but  to  the  artistical  eye 
carry  their  unlocked  intense  meaning — how  can  all  this  be 
entered  into  and  appreciated  by  a  set  of  judges  who  come  ab 
extra,  and  just  see  what  is  before  their  nose  ?  Truly,  any 
statesman,  it  signifies  not  who,  has  a  hard  battle  before  him,  who 
in  days  of  party  strife  comes  to  have  his  administration  over¬ 
hauled  before  what  is  called  the  tribunal  of  his  country. 

Strafford  was  as  fully  equal  to  this  emergency  as  he  had 
been  to  any  before  it,  and  played  off  his  host  of  papers  with  all 
the  self-possession  and  dexterity  possible.  No  knowledge  of 
what  a  thread  his  life  hung  by  ever  unsteadied  for  a  moment 


84 


Lord  Strafford. 


his  thorough  coolness  and  presence  of  mind;  no  unfair  play, 
time  after  time,  throughout  the  trial,  put  him  the  least  out  of 
temper  ;  he  let  nothing  pass  without  a  struggle,  he  fought  for 
a  point  of  law  or  court  practice  stoutly,  determinately, — when 
decided  against  him,  the  fine  well-tempered  spirit  was  passive 
again,  took  with  a  nil  admirari  what  it  could  not  help,  and 
worked  upon  the  bad  ground  as  if  it  were  its  own  choice.  A 
charge  was  made  with  every  skilful  exaggeration  and  embellish¬ 
ment  ;  he  simply  asked  time  to  get  up  his  reply — it  was 
refused  ;  without  “  sign  of  repining  ” — it  is  the  unconsciously 
beautiful  expression  of  Baillie — he  turned  round  and  conferred 
with  his  counsel.  Bor  a  few  minutes,  a  little  nucleus  of  heads, 
amid  the  general  turmoil,  were  seen  in  earnest  consultation, 
eyes  bent  downwards,  and  hands  shuffling  and  picking  out 
papers  :  the  defence  arranged  with  that  concentrated  attention 
which  shortness  of  time  and  necessity  inspire,  Strafford  was 
ready  again,  and  faced  the  court.  Great  was  the  contrast  of  the 
rest  of  the  scene  ;  these  pauses  were  the  immediate  signal  for  a 
regular  noise  and  hubbub,  and  it  was  with  laughing,  chattering, 
walking  about,  eating  and  drinking,  close  to  him  and  echoed  from 
all  sides,  that  the  tall  black  figure  of  Strafford  was  seen  “  serious 
with  his  secretaries,”  and  life  and  death  were  at  work  in  his  small 
isolated  knot.  The  general  behaviour  in  court  throughout  was 
gross  and  vulgar  in  the  extreme,  and  scandalised  Baillie. 
There  was  a  continual  noise,  movement,  and  confusion,  of 
people  leaving  and  returning,  doors  slamming,  and  enormous 
eating  and  drinking ;  bread  and  meat  and  confections  were 
despatched  greedily ;  the  bottle  went  round  from  mouth  to 
mouth,  and  the  assembled  company  manifested  by  the  freest 
signs  their  enjoyment  of  the  occasion.  With  ladies  royal  and 
noble  present,  the  most  disgusting  and  unrepeatable  indecencies 
went  on :  about  which  we  shall  only  remark,  that  whatever 
rank  the  scene  in  Westminster  Hall  may  occupy  in  the  patriot’s 
eye,  as  the  foundation  of  our  liberties,  it  is  to  be  hoped  he  will 
not  enforce  it  as  a  standard  for  our  manners.  The  speeches  of 
Strafford’s  accusers  harmonised.  Pym  called  him  the  wicked 
earl ;  Maynard  and  St.  John  went  to  the  extremity  of  virulent 
coarseness  ;  and  Palmer,  the  only  one  who  kept  within  bounds, 


Lord  Straffora. 


85 


though  as  effective  as  any  of  them,  was  cut  by  his  party  after¬ 
wards,  simply  because  he  had  been  decent.  It  is  a  physiolo¬ 
gical  fact,  that  the  yoke  of  impression  once  thrown  off,  the 
human  animal  despises  and  tramples  upon  the  object  of  its 
awe ;  and  the  low  rude  scene  of  Strafford’s  trial  reflects 
invertedly,  through  dishonour  and  contempt,  the  greatness  of 
the  fallen. 

Viewing  the  whole  affair  as  a  popular  exhibition  and 
appeal  to  persons’  warm,  excited,  and  bitter  feelings,  the  mate¬ 
rials  for  producing  an  impression  against  Strafford  were  large 
and  ample ;  for  a  trial  in  a  court  of  justice  they  were  meagre, 
weak,  and  scanty  below  contempt.  It  is  a  waste  of  criticism, 
in  a  legal  point  of  view,  to  discuss  charges  which,  let  them 
have  been  ever  so  true,  were  simply  absolutely  insufficient 
for  their  judicial  object,  and  did  not  approach  to  proving  the 
crime  which  was  alleged.  The  proceeding  in  fact  rested 
throughout,  though  nominally  on  a  legal  ground,  really  upon 
a  simple  assumption,  viz.,  that  the  view  of  the  royal  preroga¬ 
tive  which  Pym,  Hampden,  and  a  purely  modern  party  took, 
was  the  true  authoritative  one ;  that  Strafford  having  acted 
against  that  view,  had  violated  the  constitution  ;  that  the  King 
(was  the  inference)  being  part  of  the  constitution,  suffered  from 
its  violation ;  that  therefore  Strafford,  by  maintaining  the  royal 
prerogative,  had  traitorously  betrayed  the  King.  •  Conjointly 
with  this  most  efficacious  and  enormous  assumption,  the  ridicu¬ 
lous  and  contemptible  farce  was  indeed  gone  into  of  attempting 
to  prove  that  raising  the  impost  on  tobacco,  and  farming  the 
customs  on  wool,  and  mixing  brass  alloy  with  silver  fourpenny 
and  sixpenny  pieces,  and  the  like,  contributed  to  make  up 
treason,  and  that  sending  four  soldiers  and  a  corporal  to  exe¬ 
cute  an  order  of  Council  was  constructive  treason,  and  levying 
war  upon  the  King ;  but  a  party  view  of  the  prerogative  was 
the  real  fallacy  which  pleaded  all  the  while  ;  and  that  view 
was  not  supported  by  facts,  which  were  clear  and  determinate 
for  the  other  side.  Strafford  had  exerted,  more  actively  and 
strictly,  powers  that  had  slept  in  feeble  hands  for  some  years, 
and  that  was  all ;  he  had  done  no  more,  in  point  of  law,  than 
other  Lord  Deputies  had  done  before  him.  He  proved  this — 


86 


Lord  Strafford. 


and  he  added,  “  Even  if  it  is  not  so,  this  is  not  treason ;  these 
acts  may  be  what  you  please,  misdemeanours,  felonies,  anything, 
— they  are  not  treason ;  giving  authority  unto  Eobert  Savil, 
sergeant-at-arms,  is  not  treason ;  ousting  Owen  Oberman  is 
not  treason;  ejecting  Sir  Cyprian  Horselield  is  not  treason. 
Be  the  cases  ever  so  atrocious,  a  hundred  misdemeanours 
cannot  make  a  felony,  a  hundred  felonies  cannot  make  treason.” 

“  I  have  not  committed  treason,”  he  said,  and  nobody  could  con¬ 
tradict  him.  The  House  of  Lords,  weak,  miserable,  vacillating 
body  as  they  were,  could  not  condemn  a  man  on  principles 
which  would  not  require  developing  to  hang  up  any  subject  pro¬ 
miscuously  for  doing  anything  or  for  doing  nothing.  It  was 
necessary  to  go  beyond  his  acts ,  his  overt  acts,  and  bring  into 
court  his  words — words  uttered  in  the  secret  service  of  the  State, 
at  the  Council,  in  the  cabinet — words  that  were  more  like 
thoughts  than  words;  as  legal  facts  utterly  shadowy  and  abortive, 
non-existences,  not  cognisable  by  law.  The  charge  against  the 
Earl  of  Strafford,  it  was  alleged,  “  was  of  an  extraordinary 
nature,  being  to  make  treason  evident  out  of  a  complication  of 
several  ill  acts ;  that  he  must  be  traced  through  many  dark 
paths,  and  this  precedent  seditious  discourse  compared  with 
that  subsequent  outrageous  action,  the  circumstances  of  both 
which  might  be  equally  considerable  with  the  matter  itself, 
and  be  judged  by  the  advices  which  he  gave  and  the  expressions 
which  he  uttered  upon  emergent  occasions,  as  by  his  public 
actions.”  They  had  a  better  chance  of  finding  something 
to  their  purpose  here.  Strafford  had  had  strong  views  of  the 
propriety, — in  extraordinary  emergencies,  and  to  maintain  a 
great  principle  which  must  otherwise  fall,  when  matters  could 
no  longer  go  on  quietly,  and  it  was  merely  a  question  which 
side  should  first  digress  in  order  to  prevent  the  other’s  rise, — 
of  taking  extraordinary  steps  upon  the  principle  of  self-pre¬ 
servation.  He  held  the  doctrine  upon  a  manly  theory,  which 
did  honour  to  the  heroism  of  his  nature,  and  which  he  expressed 
by  the  maxim,  Salus  'pojpuli  sujprema  lex.  A  passage  in  the 
former  part  of  this  article  explains  the  kind  of  liberty  we 
mean.  In  that  transition  state  of  things  there  was  in  fact  no 
precise  limit  as  to  what  the  King  could  do,  and  what  he  could 


Lord  Strafford. 


8  7 


not  do ;  if  he  did  what  his  predecessors  did,  he  could  do  any¬ 
thing  ;  if  he  did  what  his  successors  have  done,  he  could  do 
nothing.  Strafford  knew  something  of  the  predecessors,  hut 
nothing  at  all  of  the  successors. 

To  gain  this  all-important  point,  the  Commons  broke 
through  all  the  rules  of  legal  evidence,  as  they  had  violated 
all  the  positions  of  the  criminal  law.  The  Lords  were  peti¬ 
tioned,  and  out  of  weakness  and  timidity  permitted  the  hitherto 
unheard-of  license  of  compelling  the  witness  of  privy  councillors 
as  to  the  fact  of  expressions  used  at  the  Council  hoard, — a 
mean,  underhand,  and  dastardly  channel  of  evidence,  which 
violated  the  solemn  oath  of  secrecy  which  introduced  the 
privy  councillor  to  his  office,  and  was  replete  with  practical 
mischiefs.  A  variety  of  speeches  were  brought  up — that  he 
would  make  the  King’s  little  finger  heavier  than  the  loins  of 
the  law — that  he  would  drive  all  the  Scotch  out  of  Ireland — 
that  he  would  have  some  of  the  aldermen  of  London  hanged — 
and  others.  He  addressed  himself  with  great  tact  to  the  legal 
weaknesses  and  flaws  in  the  evidence,  and  literally  allowed 
nothing  to  he  fairly  proved  against  him.  One  case  after  another 
was  tried,  and  a  determined  push  made  for  a  legal  conviction. 
At  a  Council  held  after  the  last  Parliament,  which  had  been 
dissolved  for  refusing  supplies  for  the  Scotch  war,  it  was 
asserted  that  Strafford  had  instigated  the  King  to  bring  over 
his  Irish  army  and  compel  contributions.  Whatever  Strafford’s 
opinion  was  as  to  the  lawfulness  of  such  a  step,  it  was  not 
probable  that  he  should  have  expressed  it  so  definitely  at  an 
English  Council  board,  with  the  composition  of  which  he  was 
sufficiently  acquainted.  Lord  Traquair  retreated  in  court 
from  his  prior  deposition  before  the  Commons’  committee,  and 
could  only  remember  that  Strafford  was  for  fighting  the  Scotcli 
instantly,  and  not  attending  to  their  protestation.  Lord  Mor¬ 
ton,  the  Duke  of  Kortliumberland,  and  the  Lord  Treasurer 
Juxon  asserted  the  same.  Archbishop  Usher  had  heard  him 
in  Ireland  express  the  general  sentiment  that  a  king  might 
take  such  a  step ;  Sir  Eobert  King  had  heard  Sir  George  Kad- 
cliffe,  Strafford’s  friend ,  say  that  the  King  had  30,000  men,  and 
£400,000  in  his  purse,  and  a  sword  at  his  side — if  he  should 


88 


Lord  Strafford. 


want  money  who  should  pity  him  ?  Sir  Thomas  Barrington 
had  heard'  Sir  George  Wentworth,  Strafford’s  brother,  say,  that 
the  commonwealth  was  sick  of  peace,  and  never  would  be  well 
till  it  was  conquered  again.  The  Earl  of  Bristol  had  heard 
Strafford  say,  on  some  occasion  or  other,  that  he  would  not  have 
another  Parliament  called,  “  because  the  danger  admitted  not 
of  so  slow  a  remedy.”  All  this  evidence  was  of  course  nothing 
to  the  point  in  proving  the  particular  speech  then  before  the 
Court,  and  could  do  no  more  than  produce  an  unfavourable 
impression ;  they  could  not  get  at  Strafford  himself.  However, 
give  up  the  matter  we  will  not,  resolved  the  indefatigable 
Commons ;  “  if  one  Council  does  not  supply  us  with  the  speech, 
another  shall !” 

It  had  been  one  of  those  weak  concessions  of  Charles  to  the 
popular  party,  which  answered  no  purpose  but  that  of  con¬ 
fusion,  to  call  Sir  Harry  Yane,  father  of  the  one  above  men¬ 
tioned,  to  the  post  of  Secretary  about  a  year  before.  He  was 
a  mortal  foe  of  Strafford’s  ;  and  though  such  more  on  private 
than  political  grounds,  had  yet  connection  through  his  son 
with  the  popular  side.  Sir  Harry  Vane  gave  in  evidence  that 
at  a  meeting  of  the  Committee  of  State,  the  “  Cabinet  Council, 
as  it  was  called,”  on  “  the  King  asking,  since  he  failed  of  the 
assistance  and  supply  he  expected  by  subsidies,  what  course  he 
should  now  take,”  the  Earl  of  Strafford  answered,  “  Sir,  you 
have  now  done  your  duty,  and  your  subjects  have  failed  in 
theirs  ;  and  therefore  you  are  absolved  from  the  rules  of  govern¬ 
ment,  and  may  supply  yourself  by  extraordinary  ways ;  you 
must  prosecute  the  war  vigorously;  you  have  an  army  in 
Ireland  with  which  you  may  reduce  this  kingdom.”  Sir  Harry 
Yane  remembered  these  words;  but  the  Duke  of  Northumber¬ 
land  did  not ;  he  only  remembered  the  expression  about  being 
absolved  from  the  rules  of  government ;  the  Marquis  of  Hamil¬ 
ton  did  not ;  the  Lord  Treasurer  Juxon  did  not ;  Lord  Cot- 
tington  did  not ;  Laud  and  Windebank  were  not  allowed  to 
give  evidence.  The  words,  anyhow,  were  not  treason  ;  but, 
moreover,  the  law  with  respect  to  evidence  for  treason  was  clear 
and  insurmountable ;  it  required  two  witnesses,  and  here  was 
but  one.  This  was  on  the  twelfth  day  of  the  trial. 


Lord  Strafford. 


89 


Three  more  days  passed  in  such  persevering  reiterated 
strokes  on  the  one  side,  and  parries  on  the  other.  On  the 
sixteenth  day  of  session,  just  as  Strafford  was  about  to 
commence  his  wind-up  speech,  up  stood  the  Committee  of 
Management  with  an  ominous  request  to  the  Lords  to  be  al¬ 
lowed  to  call  in  some  fresh  witness  they  had  reserved  expressly 
on  the  23d  article,  that  of  Vane’s  testimony.  Strafford  divined 
pretty  well  what  they  were  at,  and  was  even  with  them :  he 
applied  for  the  like  permission  himself  on  some  articles.  A 
long  debate  followed ;  the  Lords  adjourned,  and  returned  with 
the  answer,  that  if  one  side  had  the  liberty,  the  other  ought  to 
have  it  as  well.  It  was  a  plain  simple  piece  of  fairness  which 
common  decency  required ;  nevertheless  it  was  the  first  that 
had  been  shown,  and  it  perfectly  flabbergasted  the  Commons. 
A  storm  ensued  ;  the  court  was  in  an  uproar.  Upon  a  self- 
evident  point  of  honesty  and  common  sense  that  it  ought  to 
have  shamed  a  savage  not  to  see,  the  Commons  wrangled  and 
fought  like  men  in  extremity ;  at  last  they  consented  to  the 
decision,  if  Strafford  would  name  his  articles  on  which  he  had 
additional  witnesses  to  call  up.  They  suspected  he  had  none, 
and  thought  they  had  caught  him  in  his  feint ;  for  to  have 
named  articles  where  no  fresh  witnesses  were  in  reality  forth¬ 
coming  was  a  too  hazardous  game  to  play.  Nevertheless, 
Strafford  proceeded  to  name  a  first,  a  second,  a  third,  a  fourth  ; 
there  were  more  coming,  when  the  gathered  wrath  of  the 
Commons  burst  like  a  thunder-cloud  :  they  rose  in  a  fury  on 
both  sides,  and  with  the  shout  of  “Withdraw  !  withdraw  !  with¬ 
draw  !”  got  all  to  their  feet,  on  with  their  hats,  and  cocked  their 
beavers  in  the  King’s  sight.  The  court  was  a  scene  of  wild 
confusion ;  and  the  outbreak  of  malignant,  of  diabolical  passion 
was  so  terrible,  that  if  Strafford  had  not  slipped  away  to  his 
barge  on  the  first  beginning  of  it,  he  seemed  literally  in  danger 
of  being  torn  in  pieces  on  the  spot,  and  leaving  the  dark  stain  of 
his  blood  upon  the  pavement  of  Westminster  Hall.  Out  rushed 
the  Commons  with  the  impetuosity  of  wild  beasts  and  maniacs, 
leaving  the  King  and  Lords  to  take  themselves  off  as  they 
pleased, — and  proceeded  to  their  House.  And  now,  “We  have 
gone  too  far  to  retire,”  was  the  word.  ‘  Here  we  are  at  home. 


90 


Lord  Strafford. 


and  can  do  what  we  please ;  here  we  reign  the  great  Commons 
of  England,  the  new  dynasty  of  force  ;  we  must  do  something 
if  we  are  to  establish  ourselves ;  we  must  strike  a  blow ;  we 
must  show  the  world  what  we  are.’  The  bill  of  Strafford’s 
attainder  was  resolved  on.  Strafford  had  foiled  them,  driven 
them  out  of  court,  and  that  was  their  retaliation. 

It  now  appeared  what  the  purpose  was  of  the  suspicious 
request  to  the  Lords  :  viz.,  to  bring  legally  home  the  words 
deposed  to  by  Yane,  by  the  addition  of  a  second  witness,  or 
what  they  chose  to  call  such,  to  the  same  words.  Mr.  Pym 
rose,  and  explained  that  being  on  a  visit  a  few  months  before 
with  the  younger  Sir  Harry  Yane,  they  two  were  mourning 
and  sighing  together  on  the  sad  condition  of  the  kingdom,  and 
the  oppression  of  afflicted  patriots ;  that  Sir  Harry  Yane  said 
he  could  show  him  a  paper  from  which  it  would  appear  that 
still  worse  was  in  store — a  certain  note  of  his  father’s  of  what 
passed  at  a  Council  meeting.  The  note  seen,  they  thought  a 
copy  might  some  day  be  of  use ;  but  was  such  a  proceeding 
allowable  ?  Sir  Harry  Yane  was  delicate,  Pym  was  patriotic. 
Sir  Harry  Yane’s  delicacy  had  yielded  after  a  struggle  to  Pym’s 
patriotism;  he  (Pym)  had  taken  a  copy,  which  he  now  laid 
before  the  House.  The  mysterious  document  ran — “  What 
was  now  to  be  done,  since  Parliament  had  refused  supplies  ? 
L.  Lt.  Ir. — Absolved  from  rules  of  government ;  prosecute  the 
war  vigorously — an  army  in  Ireland  to  subdue  this  kingdom. 
A.  B.  C.  G. — Some  sharp  expressions  against  Parliaments, 
fierce  advice  to  the  King.”  It  required  no  great  deciphering 
to  discover  that  the  former  was  the  Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ireland, 
the  latter  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury’s  Grace.  And  here, 
said  Pym,  is  our  second  witness  ;  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how — 
if  he  meant  the  paper  itself,  paper  is  no  person,  and  therefore 
no  witness ;  if  he  meant  Sir  Harry  Yane,  he  was  the  same 
witness  as  before.  But  this  was  not  a  moment  for  meta¬ 
physics. 

Up  then  rose  Sir  Harry  Yane  the  younger,  “  in  some  seem¬ 
ing  disorder,” — considering  the  communication  he  was  going 
to  make,  one  would  not  have  imagined  it  necessary  to  feign 
a  blush  ;  he  would  tell  the  House  how  he  had  become  possessed 


Lord  Strafford. 


9 [ 

of  the  valuable  note.  His  father  had  sent  him  to  unlock  some 
chests  of  family  papers ;  he  saw  with  the  rest  a  red  velvet 
cabinet ;  he  felt  curious  to  know  what  wras  in  that  red  velvet 
cabinet ;  he  must  have  the  key  of  that  red  velvet  cabinet  to 
look  for  more  family  papers  ;  the  key  sent  from  the  unsuspect¬ 
ing  father,  what  should  he  stumble  on  but  this  note — a 
curious  note  ;  he  took  a  copy  of  it  on  the  spot ;  very  curious 
indeed — he  showed  it  to  Pym  afterwards.  Alas !  young  Sir 
Harry  Vane  was  afraid  his  patriotism  had  got  him  into  diffi¬ 
culties,  and  lost  him  the  affection  of  a  father  for  ever. 

Old  Sir  Harry  Vane  rose  up,  also  “in  much  pretty  confu¬ 
sion,”  professing  to  be  exceedingly  indignant,  and  wounded 
to  the  quick  : — 4  Young  gentleman,  you  ought  not  to  have  done 
this ;  you  have  injured  my  character  irreparably ;  I  am  very 
angry  with  you,  and  I  shall  frown.’  And  thereupon  the  father 
frowned,  and  looked  exceedingly  indignant  and  black.  A 
variety  of  “  passionate  gestures  ”  passed  between  the  two 
actors  ;  killing  glances  were  exchanged  ;  and  it  would  require 
the  pencil  of  a  Hogarth  to  do  justice  to  the  exuding  hypocrisy, 
the  shining  glutinous  knavery  of  the  scene.  The  House 
carried  on  sympathetically  the  fraud ;  stroked  and  soothed 
and  patted  “  the  young  gentleman,”  and  enjoined  by  formal 
vote  the  father  to  be  reconciled  to  the  son. 

The  Commons  once  started  and  set  going,  rushed  upon  that 
wild  and  unconstitutional  career  which,  to  the  eye  of  impartial 
history,  stamps  with  unreality  all  their  previous  professions, 
and  entirely  abandons  the  ground  of  law  to  their  opponents. 
A  bill  for  the  total  abolition  of  Episcopacy  was  soon  the 
appendage,  a  proud  and  honourable  one  to  Strafford,  of  the  act 
of  attainder  :  another  bill  in  plain  palpable  violation  of  the 
whole  framework  of  the  State  followed,  for  making  that 
Parliament  indissoluble  except  by  themselves.  The  mask  of 
constitutionalism  was  torn  off ;  daring,  reckless  innovation  was 
proclaimed;  and  had  a  royal  army  forthwith  proceeded  to 
action,  Charles  might  justiy  have  pleaded  the  defence  of  the 
established  laws  of  the  country  for  taking  the  step.  It  may 
be  interesting  to  those  who  regard  this  Parliament  as  the 
founders  of  our  civil  and  religious  liberties,  to  be  reminded 


92 


Lord  Strafford. 


of  another  fact  or  two.  The  eighteenth  charge  upon  which 
death  was  demanded  on  Strafford  was,  that  he  had  actually 
connived  at  the  existence  of  Roman  Catholic  chapels  in  Ireland, 
and  allowed  Roman  Catholics  to  use  their  own  form  of  worship  ; 
that  he  had  reduced  the  fines  imposed  on  account  of  their 
religion,  and  actually  tolerated  them  in  the  army.  These  first 
discoverers  and  institutors  of  the  sacred  rights  of  conscience 
formally  petitioned  Charles  in  their  House  for  the  death  of  an 
unfortunate  Romish  priest,  purely  on  account  of  his  religion ;  the 
very  first  instance  in  history  in  which  such  punishment  had  been 
put  on  that  exclusive  ground.  The  Ho- Popery  cry,  so  loathed 
by  the  advocates  of  freedom  now,  was  carried  to  the  highest 
pitch,  and  the  House  made  itself  a  stage  of  the  lowest  farce 
exhibitions  on  the  subject.  While  a  report  on  the  increase  of 
Popery  in  the  country  was  reading  before  the  House,  two  large 
fat  county  members,  happening  to  be  sitting  together  on  a 
rickety  board,  it  broke  with  a  loud  crack.  An  honourable 
gentleman,  Sir  John  Wray  by  name,  swore  he  smelt  gunpowder, 
and  rushed  out  into  the  lobby,  followed  by  a  whole  crowd  of 
members;  the  people  in  the  lobby  rushed  into  the  streets, 
shouting  that  the  House  was  blown  up,  and  everybody  killed  ; 
the  alarm  was  carried  by  water  into  the  city ;  trained  bands 
came  up  with  beat  of  drum,  and  were  surprised  to  see  the 
Parliament  House  still  standing.  Mr.  Hollis  went  up  with  an 
address  of  the  Commons  to  the  Lords  on  the  subject  of  this 
apprehended  increase  of  Popery,  in  which,  with  the  ordinary 
Puritanical  cant,  so  well  taken  off  by  Scott,  the  House  of 
Commons  was  compared  rather  indiscriminately  to  the  fig-tree 
that  had  not  yet  produced  fruit,  and  to  Elijah  who  was  carried 
up  by  a  whirlwind,  and  the  King’s  advisers  to  the  locusts  and 
to  Ahitophel. 

The  bill  of  attainder  set  going,  the  Commons  returned  to 
Westminster  Hall,  professing  themselves  no  longer  accusers, 
but  judges.  With  an  inimitable  life  and  grace,  to  use  the 
words  of  a  spectator,  Strafford  made  before  an  audience  pledged 
to  his  destruction  a  farewell  defence  too  well  known  to  be  here 
quoted.  Toward  the  conclusion,  alluding  to  his  children, 
those  dear  pledges  a  saint  in  heaven  had  left  him,  the  memory 


Lord  Strafford. 


93 


of  his  deceased  wife  rushed  vividly  across  his  mind ;  for  a  short 
time  he  was  unable  to  speak ;  the  tears  fell  down,  and  he  had 
only  strength,  when  he  resumed,  for  another  sentence.  “  You 
will  pardon  my  infirmity ;  something  I  should  have  added,  but 
am  not  able,  therefore  let  it  pass.  Now,  my  Lords,  for  myself : 
I  have  been,  by  the  blessing  of  Almighty  God,  taught  that  the 
afflictions  of  this  present  life  are  not  worthy  to  be  compared  to 
the  glory  which  shall  be  revealed  hereafter.  And  so,  my  Lords, 
even  so,  with  all  tranquillity  of  mind,  I  freely  submit  myself  to 
your  judgment,  and  whether  that  judgment  be  for  life  or  death, 
Te  Deum  laudamus”  With  upraised  eyes,  he  added — “  In  te, 
Domine ,  confido,  non  confundar  in  ceternum.” 

Pym  answered  him  with  the  flowing  hardened  rhetoric  of 
an  old  spokesman  of  the  House,  which  failed  him  however 
remarkably  when  he  came  to  reply  to  some  parts  of  that 
morning’s  defence.  He  broke  down,  became  confused,  looked 
foolish,  and  fumbled  among  his  papers ;  showing,  somewhat  to 
the  entertainment  of  Strafford’s  friends,  that  however  fine 
might  be  his  premeditated  flash,  he  could  not  help  showing 
where  it  ended  and  the  real  extempore  began. 

One  word  on  Mr.  Hallam’s  defence  of  this  bill.  It  is  a 
questionable  attempt  to  save  at  once  his  credit  as  a  lawyer  and 
indulge  his  full  resentment  as  a  partisan.  He  is  compelled  to 
allow  the  illegality  of  judging  Strafford  by  act  of  attainder,  but 
he  thrusts  in  obliquely  a  saving  clause,  that  the  Lords  voted  judi¬ 
cially.  This  is  mere  special  pleading.  The  Lords  received  the 
hill  from  the  Commons ;  they  passed  the  bill,  and  sent  it  up  for 
the  royal  sanction.  In  what  particular  form  they  gave  their 
vote  does  not  signify  the  least;  they  acted  as  a  house  of 
Parliament,  and  not  as  a  court;  Westminster  Hall  was  over 
and  done  with.  It  is  self-evident  that  when  the  omnipotence 
of  the  legislature  decides  a  point,  it  ipso  facto  removes  it  from 
the  decision  of  the  court  of  justice  :  the  latter  being  only  the 
medium  through  which  the  legislative  authority  acts,  it  neces¬ 
sarily  ceases  when  that  authority  acts  immediately.  The 
reluctant  candour  that  first  makes  a  necessary  admission,  and 
then  steals  it  back  by  such  a  sophism,  is  unworthy  of  a  respect¬ 
able  historian.  Mr.  Hallam,  we  may  add,  seems  ultimately 


94 


Lord  Strafford. 


to  repose  in  the  notion  of  a  summary  national  justice,  of 
which  we  shall  only  remark,  that  if  a  nation,  when  it  wants 
more  liberty  than  it  has  had  in  past  ages,  has  a  right  to 
destroy  the  man  who  opposes  the  claim,  it  is  not  easy  to  see  why 
an  individual  who  wants  to  have  more  money  may  not  exercise 
the  same  right,  and  cut  the  first  man’s  throat  who  refuses  to 
stand  and  deliver.  It  was  unnecessary  that  Mr.  Hallam 
should  combine  weak  reasoning  with  had  morals,  and  use  the 
arts  of  a  sophist  when  he  had  in  reserve  the  doctrine  of  a 
barbarian. 

The  inevitable  downward  course  only  now  remained,  which 
rude  power  could  dictate  to  the  semblance  of  a  government 
and  a  constitution.  The  bill  of  attainder  passed  the  Commons 
and  went  up  to  the  Lords,  accompanied  with  the  formidable 
hint  which  fifty- six  names  of  Straff ordian  members  who  voted 
against  the  bill,  posted  up  and  cursed  by  infuriate  mobs, 
would  suggest  to  a  poor  frightened  Upper  House.  A  melancholy 
humble  visit  of  Charles  to  the  Lords,  begging  only  for  Strafford’s 
life,  offering  perpetual  banishment,  imprisonment,  anything 
to  purchase  simple  existence — tlje  feeblest  tone  that  monarch 
ever  had  assumed  before  a  country,  brought  a  storm  about  their 
ears  that  quite  overwhelmed  them  :  boisterous  crowds  besieged 
the  House,  and  dogged  every  peer  in  the  streets  with  the  cry 
of  “Justice,  justice,  justice  !”  Strafford’s  friends  stayed  away 
because  they  could  do  him  no  good,  the  bishops  stayed  away 
because  they  would  not  vote  on  a  question  of  blood — the  bill 
passed  the  Lords  and  went  up  to  the  King.  He  received  it  on 
the  Saturday  evening;  all  Sunday  he  was  in  agonising  suspense. 
A  note  from  Strafford  in  the  Tower  arrived.  “Set  your  conscience 
at  liberty,”  it  said,  “  remove  this  unfortunate  thing  out  of  the 
way ;  my  consent  shall  more  acquit  you  than  all  the  world  can 
do  besides.”  So  generous  an  offer  it  was  shocking  to  think  of 
making  use  of,  still  it  showed  that  Strafford  saw  his  difficulties. 
Could  he  save  him  ?  was  it  possible  1  Would  his  veto  be  of  any 
use  ?  Charles  said  not ;  Strafford  himself  seemed  to  say  not ; 
would  he  not  forgive  him,  nay  feel  for,  pity  him  in  his  ex¬ 
tremity  ?  Still  though  a  veto  would  do  Strafford  no  good,  was 
he  not  bound  to  give  it  on  his  own  account,  and  to  free  his  own 


Lord  Strafford. 


95 


conscience  ?  He  summoned  the  judges — was  the  bill  law  ?  yes, 
an  Act  of  Parliament  was  law,  that  they  could  say ;  the  facts  of 
the  case  were  out  of  their  province.  He  consulted  the  bishops 
present  on  the  point  of  casuistry,  and  was  told  by  Williams 
that  he  had  two  consciences,  a  public  and  a  private  one.  One 
man  only  at  the  Council  board,  who  did  honour  to  the  patronage 
of  Laud,  told  him  plainly  what  he  should  do.  “Sir,”  said 
Juxon,  “  if  your  conscience  is  against  it,  do  not  consent.”  It 
was  the  voice  of  truth,  though  it  spoke  alone  ;  and  had  Charles 
listened  to  it,  could  he  have  made  the  venture,  faced  a  raging 
country,  leapt  at  once  down  the  monstrous  jaws  wdde  open  to 
devour  him,  it  would  have  been  far  better  than  what  he  did  do 
certainly,  but  it  was  a  terrific  thing  to  do.  Poor  Charles,  after 
struggling  through  the  long  long  day,  at  last,  breathless  and 
spent,  yielded  to  importunity ;  at  nine  o’clock  in  the  evening  he 
called  for  the  warrant  for  Strafford’s  execution,  and  moistened 
the  parchment  with  his  tears  as  he  wrote  his  signature.  Straf¬ 
ford  was  told  to  prepare  himself  for  death  on  the  following 
Wednesday. 

All  was  now  over — the  statesman’s  life,  with  its  troubles, 
conflicts,  commotions — the  magnificent  storm  was  spent,  and 
Strafford  had  one  brief  awful  pause  before  the  world  closed  upon 
him  for  ever.  Year  after  year,  and  hour  after  hour  to  the  last, 
the  intensity  and  excitement  of  his  career  had  increased,  had 
within  and  around  him  quickened,  like  tropical  nature,  into  a 
glowing  multiplied  life,  an  overflowing  luxuriance,  brilliancy, 
and  play  of  mind  ;  and  now  in  a  moment  every  thought  had  its 
quietus,  and  all  was  midnight  stillness  within  the  prison  walls. 
But  the  same  high  temper  and  finish  of  character  which  had 
ever  made  him  see  and  bend  to  his  position,  whatever  it  was, 
bore  him  through  his  last  short  stage  as  nobly  as  it  had  borne 
him  to  it ;  now  that  he  could  work  no  more,  he  reposed,  and, 
life  over,  addressed  himself  to  death.  Do  we  not  mistake  in¬ 
deed  the  temper  of  great  minds  all  along,  when  we  imagine 
that  because  they  devote  themselves  to  the  business  of  life, 
they  are  therefore  devoted  to  life  ?  Kather  should  wre  not  say 
that  they  adopt  that  mode  of  getting  through  it  ?  Some  trial 
meets  all  men,  adversity  the  pampered,  neglect  the  proud,  occu- 


96 


Lord  Strafford. 


pation  the  indolent,  and  life  itself  the  great.  The  big  ardent 
mind  must  be  doing  something,  or  it  pines  and  dies,  must  be 
filling  up  the  awkward  void,  storing  time  with  acts,  and  making 
life  substantial.  But  take  away  life,  and  the  worldly  principle 
is  over ;  they  are  no  longer  bound  to  it  than  they  exist  in  it, 
they  do  not  regret  the  loss  of  that  which  they  only  spent 
because  they  had,  or  love  the  rude  unsightly  material  which 
their  skill  and  labour  moulded.  Life,  the  simple  animal  or 
passive,  they  never  knew,  or  felt,  or  had ;  nature  gave  them 
not  the  sense  or  organ  which  relishes  the  mere  pleasure  of  being 
alive ;  they  never  thought  of  life  itself,  but  only  of  its  opportu¬ 
nities  ;  and  death  will  occupy,  absorb,  content  them,  if  death  is 
all  they  have  to  think  of. 

From  the  first  moment,  resigned  and  at  home  with  his  fate, 
Strafford  experienced  in  full  all  that  inward  strength  which 
had  grown  up  with  the  unconscious  religion  of  a  noble  life ;  a 
career  of  high  motives  and  great  ends  told ;  essential  heroism 
passed  by  a  natural  transition  from  its  active  to  its  passive 
state,  and  the  mind  which  had  pushed  and  strained  and  schemed 
and  battled  while  it  could,  melted  into  tenderness  when  the 
strife  was  over.  He  was  no  man  to  delude  himself  into  a 
superficial  and  unreal  frame  of  mind,  or  fancy  religious  feeling 
which  he  had  not ;  his  old  chaplain,  Dr.  Carr,  said  he  was  the 
most  rigid  self- examiner  and  scrutiniser  of  his  own  motives  he 
ever  knew  :  yet  the  entire  freedom  with  which  he  felt  himself 
forgive  his  enemies,  destroyers,  and  all  the  world — that  power, 
of  all  others,  the  test  of  the  spiritual,  and  so  defined  in  gospel 
law,  now  comforted  him  greatly,  showing  that  God  had  not  left 
him  to  his  own  strength  when  he  could  solidly  do  that  which 
was  above  it.  He  lifted  a  natural  upward  eye  heavenwards, 
and  occupied  himself  during  the  time  which  his  family  affairs 
left  him  in  religious  exercises  with  his  chaplain  and  Archbishop 
Usher.  Usher  told  Laud  that,  for  a  layman,  he  was  the  best 
instructed  person  in  divinity  he  ever  knew. 

Earthly  trials  however  had  not  quite  ended ;  and  even  this 
short  interval  was  interrupted  by  the  sad  intelligence  of 
Wandesford,  who  had  languished  and  died  broken-hearted  in 
consequence  of  the  recent  events, — a  mournful  testimonial  of 


Lord  Strafford. 


97 


his  affection  to  send  to  cheer  his  patron’s  prison.  Strafford 
shed  tears  over  his  old  friend,  whom  he  was  just  going  to 
follow.  He  was  pre-eminently  a  fascinating  person  to  those 
he  was  intimate  with  ;  they  were  affected  almost  like  lovers 
over  his  loss,  and  grieved  and  sickened  as  if  some  mysterious 
fibre  of  their  own  life  were  broken.  Radcliffe  suffered  a  great 
change  after  Strafford’s  death.  He  was  asked  to  write  his  life 
when  he  died,  and  excused  himself  with  great  simplicity  on 
this  score.  He  had  been  a  different  man  ever  since  that  event, 
was  ‘'grown  lazy  and  idle,  and  his  mind  much  enfeebled.” 
“  When  I  lost  my  lord,  I  lost  a  friend ;  such  a  friend  as  I  do 
not  think  any  man  hath,  perhaps  never  man  had  the  like ;  a 
treasure  which  no  earthly  thing  can  countervail,  so  excellent  a 
friend,  and  so  much  mine ;  he  never  had  anything  in  his  pos¬ 
session  and  power  which  he  thought  too  good  for  his  friends  ; 
he  was  never  weary  to  take  pains  for  his  friends.” 

Some  private  and  family  business  was  settled  with  his 
characteristic  coolness  and  despatch,  parting  instruction  sent 
to  his  children,  and  farewells  to  friends.  A  beautiful  pathetic 
note  from  Radcliffe  brought  in  answer  many  thanks  for  the 
comfort  of  it,  a  blessing  for  Radcliffe’s  son  ;  “  and  God 
deliver  you  out  of  this  wicked  world,  according  to  the 
innocence  that  is  in  you.”  And  to  his  young  boy  he  wrote  : 

“My  dearest  Will, — These  are  the  last  lines  you  are  to 
receive  from  a  father  that  tenderly  loves  you. 

“  Sweet  Will,  be  careful  to  take  the  advice  of  those  friends 
which  are  by  me  desired  to  advise  you  for  your  education.  Serve 
God  diligently  morning  and  evening,  and  recommend  yourself 
unto  Him,  and  have  Him  before  your  eyes  in  all  your  ways.  With 
patience  hear  the  instructions  of  those  friends  I  leave  with  you, 
and  diligently  follow  their  counsel  :  for,  till  the  time  that  you 
come  to  have  experience  in  the  world,  it  will  be  far  more  safe  to 
trust  to  their  judgments  than  your  own. 

“  Lose  not  the  time  of  your  youth ;  but  gather  those  seeds  of 
virtue  and  knowledge  which  may  be  of  use  to  yourself  and  com¬ 
fort  to  your  friends  for  the  rest  of  your  life.  And  that  this  may 
be  the  better  effected,  attend  thereunto  with  patience,  and  be  sure 
to  correct  and  refrain  yourself  from  anger.  Suffer  not  sorrow  to 
cast  you  down ;  but,  with  cheerfulness  and  good  courage,  go  on 
the  race  you  have  to  run  in  all  sobriety  and  truth.  Be  sure,  with 

M.E.-l.]  G 


98 


Lord  Strafford . 


an  hallowed  care,  to  have  respect  unto  all  the  commandments  of 
God,  and  give  not  yourself  to  neglect  them  in  the  least  things,  lest 
by  degrees  you  come  to  forget  them  in  the  greatest :  for  the  heart 
of  man  is  deceitful  above  all  things.  And  in  all  your  duties  and 
devotions  towards  God,  rather  perform  them  jo}rfully  than  pen¬ 
sively  ;  for  God  loves  a  cheerful  giver.  For  your  religion,  let  it  be 
directed  according  to  that  which  shall  he  taught  by  those  which  are 
in  God’s  Church  the  proper  teachers ;  rather  than  that  you  should 
ever  either  fancy  one  to  yourself,  or  be  led  by  men  that  are 
singular  in  their  opinions,  and  delight  to  go  ways  of  their  own 
finding  out.” 

One  remarkable  instruction  which  he  left  behind  him 
should  be  mentioned  :  “  That  he  foresaw  that  ruin  was  like 
to  come  upon  the  revenues  of  the  Church,  and  that,  perhaps, 
they  might  be  shared  amongst  the  nobility  and  gentry ;  but  I 
charge  you  never  to  meddle  with  any  of  it,  for  the  curse  of 
God  will  follow  all  those  that  meddle  with  such  a  thing.” 
He  had  an  opportunity  of  showing  his  love  for  the  Church 
more  solidly  than  by  words.  A  mysterious  visit  from  his 
brother-in-law,  Mr.  Denzil  Hollis,  one  of  the  leading  men  in 
the  Commons,  intimated  to  him  authoritatively  that  he  was 
yet  safe  if  he  would  but  pledge  himself  to  advise  the  King  to 
give  up  Episcopacy.  From  what  parties  this  offer  really 
came  does  not  exactly  appear.  It  may  have  come  from  the 
middle  party  in  the  House.  It  may  have  been  only  an 
attempt  on  Hollis’s  own  part  to  save  a  relation  by  extracting 
some  concession  which  might  be  urged  to  his  advantage.  It 
may  have  been  a  trick  of  his  enemies  to  disgrace  him,  of 
which  Hollis  was  made  the  unwitting  medium.  Whatever  it 
was,  Strafford  met  it  with  an  answer  worthy  of  him,  that  “  he 
would  not  buy  his  life  at  so  dear  a  rate ;  ”  and  the  incident 
comes  in  curiously,  as  a  last  mark  connecting  his  fate  with 
the  cause  of  religion  and  the  Church. 

The  evening  of  Tuesday  suggested  thoughts  for  his  passage 
to  the  scaffold  the  following  morning.  Archbishop  Laud  had 
been  his  fellow- prisoner  in  the  Tower  all  along,  and  was  now 
waiting  in  his  cell  to  receive  the  same  sentence  :  travellers  on 
the  same  road,  they  had  come  to  the  same  journey’s  end  ;  the 
fast  friends,  the  sympathising  statesmen,  fellow-champions  of 


Lord  Strafford. 


99 


the  Church,  reformers,  enthusiasts,  master  spirits,  holy  man 
and  hero,  ghostly  father  and  obedient  son — they  had  held 
firm  to  one  another  in  life,  and  in  death  they  were  not 
divided.  They  were  come  to  a  poor  earthly  reward  of  their 
labours — a  sad  end  of  all  those  letters,  so  full  of  life,  hope, 
buoyancy,  and  animation — those  halloos  that  flew  across  the 
Channel,  those  spirit-stirring  thoughts  which  doubled  the 
warmth  in  each  breast  by  the  communication — sad  end  of  a 
policy  which  had  in  view  the  restoration  of  a  Church  and 
kingdom, — sad  end  indeed  of  “  Thorough !  ”  Strafford  wanted 
to  see  Laud  just  once  more,  to  take  a  last  farewell,  and  asked 
leave  of  the  Lieutenant  of  the  Tower  for  a  short  interview 
with  his  fellow-prisoner.  The  lieutenant  said  it  was  im¬ 
possible  without  the  leave  of  Parliament.  “  You  shall  hear 
all  that  passes/’  said  Strafford,  with  playful  sarcasm  ;  “  it  is  too 
late  for  him  to  plot  heresy,  or  me  to  plot  treason.”  The 
Lieutenant  repeated  his  refusal,  but  wished  Strafford  to  send  to 
Parliament  for  leave.  Strafford  would  not  hear  of  that — no ; 
Parliament  had  done  with  him,  and  he  had  done  with  Parlia¬ 
ment.  “  I  have  gotten  my  despatch  from  them,  and  will 
trouble  them  no  more.  But,  my  Lord,”  he  added,  turning  to 
Usher,  who  was  by,  “what  I  should  have  spoken  to  my  Lord’s 
Grace  of  Canterbury  is  this  :  you  shall  desire  the  Archbishop 
to  lend  me  his  prayers  this  night,  and  to  give  me  his  blessing 
when  I  go  abroad  to-morrow,  and  to  be  at  his  window,  that  by 
my  last  farewell  I  may  give  him  thanks  for  this  and  all  other 
his  former  favours.”  The  message  was  delivered  to  Laud ; 
he  replied  he  would  do  the  first,  he  could  not  answer  for  the 
second. 

All  London  was  out  the  next  morning,  and  a  hundred 
thousand  people  lined  the  avenues  to  the  Tower,  eager  to 
witness  the  behaviour  of  the  great,  once  dreaded,  minister  on 
the  scaffold.  Strafford  left  his  room  accompanied  by  the  lieu¬ 
tenant  and  officers  of  the  Tower,  and  set  out  on  the  funeral 
march.  As  he  passed  under  Laud’s  window  he  stopped  ;  no 
Laud  appeared  ;  he  turned  to  the  Lieutenant — might  he  be 
allowed  to  make  his  reverence  at  any  rate  to  the  dead  wall 
which  hid  the  Archbishop  from  his  eyes  ?  Meantime  Laud, 


IOO 


Lord  Strafford ' 


apprised  of  his  approach,  showed  himself  at  the  window. 
Strafford  bowed  to  the  earth — “  My  Lord ,  your  prayers  and 
your  blessing ;  ”  the  outstretched  arms  of  the  aged  prelate 
bestowed  both,  but,  overcome  by  grief,  his  utterance  failed, 
and  he  fell  backward  in  a  swoon. 

Strafford  himself  to  the  last  showed  the  genuine  charac¬ 
teristics  of  his  nature,  as,  leaving  the  Tower  gates,  he  en¬ 
countered  the  mob  with  wild  staring  eyes  concentrated  upon 
him.  The  Lieutenant  of  the  Tower  instantly,  portending  mis¬ 
chief  from  their  looks  and  numbers,  desired  Strafford  to  enter 
a  coach,  “  for  fear  they  should  rush  in  upon  him  and  tear  him 
in  pieces.”  But  Strafford  had  all  his  life  looked  people  in  the 
face,  and  he  would  not  shrink  from  the  encounter  now ;  he 
would  not  hear  of  a  coach.  “  No,”  he  said;  “  Master  Lieutenant, 
I  dare  look  death  in  the  face,  and  I  hope  the  people  too.  Have 
you  a  care  that  I  do  not  escape ;  and  I  care  not  how  I  die, 
whether  by  the  hand  of  the  executioner  or  the  madness  and 
fury  of  the  people :  if  that  may  give  them  better  content,  it  is 
all  one  to  me.”  And  so  singular  and  incomprehensible  is  the 
power  of  the  mind  over  the  body  in  great  emergencies,  that 
that  morning  dissipated  the  illnesses  of  a  life,  producing  one  of 
those  sudden  lightings  up  of  the  animal  frame  which  are  not 
altogether  strange  to  medical  science  in  the  case  of  those  who 
have  suffered  from  long  infirmity.  The  hour  of  death,  which 
has  the  mysterious  power  sometimes  of  restoring  even  the  lost 
faculty  of  reason,  transformed  Strafford  all  at  once  into  a  strong 
healthy  man.  And  now,  full  master  of  himself,  wound  up  to 
the  highest  tone  of  body  and  mind,  and  Strafford  all  over  and 
complete,  he  acted  on  his  way  to  the  scaffold  the  epitome  of 
his  life.  There  was  no  sullenness  or  defiance,  any  more  than 
timidity  in  his  behaviour,  as  he  marched,  a  spectator  says,  like 
a  general  at  the  head  of  his  army,  and  with  open  countenance 
and  lofty  courtesy  bowed  to  the  gazing  crowds  as  he  passed 
along.  Was  it  not  a  tacit  mode  of  saying,  “  People,  misled, 
mistaken,  I  acquit  you ;  I  blame  not  you  ;  you  are  not  respon¬ 
sible  for  this  scene.  I  have  never  had  any  quarrel  with  you, 
nor  would  you  have  had  with  me,  had  not  deeper,  subtler 
heads  than  yours  been  at  work.  All  my  life  I  have  been  your 


Lord  Strafford. 


101 


friend ;  I  have  had  your  good  in  my  eye.  The  poor  have  been 
my  favourites,  and  I  have  stood  up  for  them  against  the  rich 
oppressor.  My  arm  has  been  lifted  up  against  the  noble  and 
the  great,  but  never  against  you ;  and  not  you,  but  your  betters 
have  now  conspired  against  me”  ?  The  mob  behaved  with 
respectful  silence,  and  not  a  word  was  spoken  or  a  finger  raised 
against  him  as  he  passed  along. 

Having  mounted  the  scaffold,  where  Archbishop  Usher, 
the  Earl  of  Cleveland,  his  brother  Sir  George  Wentworth,  and 
other  friends  were  present  to  receive  him,  he  begged  the  people 
to  listen  while  he  spoke  a  few  words. 

“  My  Lord  Primate  of  Ireland,  and  all  my  Lords,  and  the 
rest  of  these  noble  gentlemen,  it  is  a  great  comfort  to  me  to  have 
your  Lordships  by  me  this  day,  because  I  have  been  known  to 
you  a  long  time,  and  I  now  desire  to  be  heard  a  few  words. 

“  I  come  here,  my  Lords,  to  pay  my  last  debt  to  sin,  which 
is  death,  and  through  the  mercies  of  God  to  rise  again  to 
eternal  glory. 

“  My  Lords,  if  I  may  use  a  few  words,  I  shall  take  it  as  a 
great  courtesy  from  you.  I  come  here  to  submit  to  the  judg¬ 
ment  that  is  passed  against  me;  I  do  it  with  a  very  quiet  and 
contented  mind.  I  do  freely  forgive  all  the  world ;  a  forgive¬ 
ness  not  from  the  teeth  outward,  but  from  my  heart.  I  speak 
it  in  the  presence  of  Almighty  God,  before  whom  I  stand,  that 
there  is  not  a  displeasing  thought  that  ariseth  in  me  against 
any  man.  I  thank  God,  I  say  truly,  my  conscience  bears  me 
witness,  that  in  all  the  honour  I  had  to  serve  his  Majesty,  I 
had  not  any  intention  in  my  heart  but  what  did  aim  at  the 
joint  and  individual  prosperity  of  the  King  and  his  people, 
although  it  be  my  ill  lot  to  be  misconstrued.  I  am  not  the 
first  man  that  hath  suffered  in  this  kind ;  it  is  a  common  por¬ 
tion  that  befalls  men  in  this  life.  Righteous  judgment  shall  be 
hereafter;  here  we  are  subject  to  error  and  misjudging  one 
another.” 

And  after  answering  the  charges  of  despotism  and  Popery, 
he  concluded  :  “  I  desire  heartily  to  be  forgiven,  if  any  rude 
or  unadvised  words  or  deeds  have  passed  from  me,  and  desire 
all  your  prayers ;  and  so,  my  Lord,  farewell,  and  farewell  all 


102 


Lord  Strafford. 


tilings  in  this  world.  The  Lord  strengthen  my  faith,  and  give 
me  confidence  and  assurance  in  the  merits  of  J esus  Christ.  I 
trust  in  God  we  shall  all  meet  to  live  eternally  in  heaven,  and 
receive  the  accomplishment  of  all  happiness  ;  where  every  tear 
shall  be  wiped  from  our  eyes,  and  sad  thoughts  from  our 
hearts.  And  so  God  bless  this  kingdom,  and  Jesus  have  mercy 
on  my  soul.” 

“  Then,  turning  himself  about,  he  saluted  all  the  noblemen, 
and  took  a  solemn  leave  of  all  considerable  persons  on  the 
scaffold,  giving  them  his  hand. 

“And  after  that  he  said — c Gentlemen,  I  would  say  my 
prayers,  and  I  entreat  you  all  to  pray  with  me  and  for  me.’ 
Then  his  chaplain,  Dr.  Carr,  laid  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer 
upon  the  chair  before  him  as  he  kneeled  down,  on  which  he 
prayed  almost  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  and  repeated  the  twenty- 
fifth  Psalm ;  then  he  prayed  as  long  or  longer  without  a  book, 
and  ended  with  the  Lord’s  Prayer.  Then,  standing  up,  he 
spied  his  brother,  Sir  George  Wentworth,  and  called  to  him 
and  said,  ‘  Brother,  we  must  part ;  remember  me  to  my  sister 
and  to  my  wife,  and  carry  my  blessing  to  my  eldest  son,  and 
charge  him  from  me  that  he  fear  God,  and  continue  an  obedient 
son  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  that  he  approve  himself  a 
faithful  subject  to  the  King;  and  tell  him  that  he  should  not 
have  any  private  grudge  or  revenge  towards  any  concerning 
me,  and  bid  him  beware  not  to  meddle  with  Church  livings, 
for  that  will  prove  a  moth  and  canker  to  him  in  his  estate ; 
and  wish  him  to  content  himself  to  be  a  servant  to  his  country, 
as  a  j  ustice  of  peace  in  his  county,  not  aiming  at  higher  pre¬ 
ferments.  Convey  my  blessing  also  to  my  daughters  Anne  and 
Arabella.  Charge  them  to  fear  and  serve  God,  and  He  will 
bless  them ;  not  forgetting  my  little  infant,  that  knows  neither 
good  nor  evil,  and  cannot  speak  for  itself.  God  speak  for  it, 
and  bless  it/  Then  said  he,  ‘  I  have  done ;  one  stroke  will 
make  my  wife  husbandless,  my  dear  children  fatherless,  and 
my  poor  servants  masterless,  and  separate  me  from  my  dear 
brother  and  all  my  friends ;  but  let  God  be  to  you  and  them 
all  in  all/ 

“After  that,  going  to  take  off  his  doublet  and  make  him- 


Lord  Strafford. 


103 

self  ready,  lie  said,  ‘  I  thank  God  I  am  no  more  afraid  of  death, 
nor  daunted  with  any  discouragements  arising  from  my  fears, 
but  do  as  cheerfully  put  off  my  doublet  at  this  time  as  ever  I 
did  when  I  went  to  bed/  Then  he  put  off  his  doublet,  and 
wound  up  his  hair  with  his  hands,  and  put  on  a  white  cap. 

“  Then  he  called,  ‘  Where  is  the  man  that  should  do  this  last 
office?’  meaning  the  executioner;  ‘call  him  to  me.’  When  he 
came,  and  asked  him  forgiveness,  he  told  him  he  forgave  him 
and  all  the  world.  Then,  kneeling  down  by  the  block,  he  went 
to  prayer  again  himself,  the  Archbishop  of  Armagh  kneeling  on 
one  side,  the  minister  on  the  other.  After  prayer  he  turned  him¬ 
self  to  the  minister,  and  spoke  some  few  words  softly,  with  his 
hands  lifted  up.  The  minister  closed  his  hands  in  his.  Then 
bowing  himself  to  the  earth,  to  lay  down  his  head  on  the  block, 
he  told  the  executioner  that  he  should  first  lay  down  his  head 
to  try  the  fitness  of  the  block,  and  take  it  up  again  before  he 
laid  it  down  for  good  and  all ;  and  this  he  did.  And  before 
he  laid  it  down  again  he  told  the  executioner  that  he  would 
give  him  warning  when  to  strike  by  stretching  forth  his  hands  ; 
and  then  he  laid  his  neck  on  the  block,  stretching  forth  his 
hands.  The  executioner  struck  off  his  head  at  one  blow  ;  then 
took  the  head  up  in  his  hands  and  showed  it  to  all  the  people, 
and  said,  ‘  God  save  the  King  !’” 

Thus  perished  a  victim  to  political  and  religious  violence, 
the  malevolence  of  an  oligarchy,  and,  we  must  add,  the  weak¬ 
ness  of  a  King ; — as  great  a  statesman  and  as  noble  a  man  as 
ever  England  produced.  We  have  nothing  to  say  more  with 
respect  to  those  who  effected  his  destruction  ;  thanks  to  them 
for  having  developed,  even  by  such  acts  as  theirs,  and  formed, 
though  they  were  but  the  blind  and  brute  instruments  of  the 
work,  a  character  which  is  an  honour  to  history.  Thanks  to 
them,  and  honour  to  him  !  Honour  to  the  lofty,  the  disinter¬ 
ested,  the  energetic,  the  large  of  mind  and  pure  of  aim, — the 
statesman  who  had  a  head  and  a  heart.  Honour  to  him  who 
had  the  courage  in  evil  days  to  defend  the  Church  against  her 
titled  spoilers,  and  make  a  swelling  aristocracy  feel  the  arm  of 
justice ;  who  could  despise  men’s  affections,  good  opinions, 
flatteries,  all  the  ease  and  satisfactions  of  a  few  short  days,  and 


104 


Lord  Strafford. 


pass  through  this  world  like  a  field  of  battle.  Honour  to  him, 
and  honour  to  all  who,  in  whatever  garb,  in  whatever  shape,  it 
may  please  the  inscrutable  providence  of  God,  in  different  ages, 
in  peculiar  atmospheres  of  Church  and  State,  to  clothe  and 
embody  the  one  eternal,  immutable,  essential  Good,  will  nobly, 
generously  recognise  that ,  and  trample  upon  all  else, — will 
maintain  the  inherent  royalty,  supremacy,  greatness,  the 
height  ineffable  and  power  divine,  the  universal  empire  and 
the  adamantine  base  of  that  great  scheme  for  which,  under 
varying  aspects,  the  Church  militates  on  earth,  but  which  will 
only  be  seen  in  purity  and  fulness  above.  Honour  to  all  such, 
if  they  effect  their  high  objects ;  and  honour  also,  if  through 
human  wilfulness  they  fail.  Their  fall  is  their  victory,  and 
their  death  triumph.  Their  memory  supports  the  cause  which 
their  lives  failed  to  do,  and  survives — as  may  Strafford’s  still — 
to  inspire  some  statesman  of  a  future  age,  who,  with  a  country 
like  his  to  save  from  moral  barrenness  and  declension,  will 
know  how  to  accommodate  an  example  to  an  altered  state  of 
things,  and  embody  its  glorious  spirit  in  a  living  form. 

Strafford  is  a  true  Shakespearian  character,  containing  all  the 
elements  of  high  perfection,  only  coloured  by  a  secular  and 
political  atmosphere  ;  belonging  to  the  world  although  above 
it.  The  human  mind  appears  but  in  dts  commencement  here, 
gives  large  promise  and  shows  mighty  powers,  spreads  its  roots, 
and  lays  its  foundations ;  but  looking  up  from  the  rich  foliage 
and  minareted  tower,  a  cloud  intercepts  our  view,  and  throws 
us  back  musing  and  melancholy  upon  an  imperfect  unfinished 
state  of  being.  And  yet  why  may  not  the  hopeful  and  loving 
eye  surmount  in  some  sort  the  mist,  and  anticipate  the  finish 
and  completion  ?  The  elemental  gas,  the  occult  fire,  the  fluid 
trickling  from  its  mournful  cell,  blue  clayey  lair,  and  sooty 
mineral,  and  cold  granite  bed,  produce  this  world  in  which  we 
live  and  breathe.  Earth’s  lower  empire  issues  in  her  upper, 
and  as  the  unsightly  riches  of  her  lahyrinthal  womb  encounter 
the  magic  touch  of  day,  they  spring  into  new  being,  a  living 
glorious  scene  :  tree,  herb,  and  flower,  and  balmy  breeze  and 
summer  skies,  the  painter’s  landscape  and  the  poet’s  dream. 
Even  so  in  the  progress  of  moral  life,  of  human  character. 


Lord  Strafford. 


105 


Mighty  spirits  appear  and  rush  across  the  field ;  they  follow 
their  mysterious  providential  call,  they  take  their  side ; 
and  when  the  immortal  principle  has  burst  forth  in  zeal 
for  some  heroic  sacred  cause,  and  manifested  to  men  and 
angels  what  they  are,  they  die,  and  lofty  virtue  calls  aloud  to 
heaven  for  its  spiritual  and  native  development.  We  wander 
here  amid  the  shadowy  beginnings  of  moral  life,  the  rough 
essences,  the  aboriginal  shapes,  the  ghost-like  forerunnings  of 
the  immortal ;  we  see  the  giant  masses  that  sustain  the  higher 
world,  but  that  is  all;  we  witness  but  the  strife  of  subter¬ 
ranean  elements,  and  hear  the  hollow  gust  and  hidden  torrents’ 
roar.  But  patience,  and  a  brighter  day  will  come,  which  shall 
mould  chaotic  humanity  into  form — a  day  of  refining,  purifying 
metamorphose,  when  virtue  shall  hardly  recognise  her  former 
self.  The  statesman’s,  warrior’s,  poet’s,  student’s,  ardent  course, 
his  longings,  impulses,  emotions,  flights,  extravagances,  all  the 
generous  stirrings  of  heart  and  rustling  rushing  movements 
upon  this  earthly  stage,  are  prophecies  of  a  life,  and  point 
straight  heavenwards.  The  heroic  is  but  the  foundation  of  the 
spiritual ;  and  the  antagonism  and  mortal  strife  over,  freed 
nature  shall  enjoy  her  holiday  and  calm,  goodness  claim  her 
paradisal  being,  and  the  wild  scene  of  greatness  and  power 
melt  into  fragrance,  melody,  and  love. 


II. 


ARCHBISHOP  LAUD.* 

(1845-) 

Before  entering  on  our  subject  we  will  venture  a  pre¬ 
liminary  remark.  None  of  the  regular  modern  lives  (we  are 
not  speaking,  of  course,  of  the  Autobiography  at  the  head  of 
our  list)  appear  to  do  full  justice  to  Archbishop  Laud.  We 
do  not  mean  that  they  are  not  eulogistic  enough,  and  defective 
in  favourable  intention  to  him — by  no  means.  Benevolence 
in  a  biographer,  however,  is  not  always  synonymous  with 
genuineness.  What  we  want  to  see  in  a  biography  is  the  man 
himself,  and  not  the  biographer’s  affection  for  him.  Bene¬ 
volence  does  really  great  injustice  often  in  this  way,  when  it 
least  intends  it.  A  friendly  portrait  is  very  apt  to  be  a  weak 
one.  We  are  so  tender  about  our  hero ;  we  will  not  let  him 
come  out,  but  keep  him  indoors  like  a  sickly  child.  And  the 
more  complex  and  irregular  the  kind  of  character,  the  greater 
the  risk  of  its  suffering  in  this  way.  The  biographer  is  too 
friendly  to  be  bold ;  he  will  not  confront  traits  in  his  hero 
that  do  not  prima  facie  promise  well ;  he  avoids  rough  parts, 
and  goes  by  the  dark  corners,  instead  of  going  into  them,  and 
seeing  where  they  lead  him.  One  set  of  features  preoccupies 
his  field  :  he  is  afraid  of  any  interference.  The  effect  of 
a  favourite  trait  is  threatened  by  an  apparent  contrary  to  it 
lurking  in  another  part  of  the  character ;  he  stops  the 
rising  antagonism  from  coming  to  the  surface.  The  conse- 

*  1.  The  Autobiography  of  Dr.  William  Laud ,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
and  Martyr  ;  collected  from  his  Reniains.  Oxford,  1839. 

2.  Archbishop  Laud's  Devotions.  Oxford. 

3.  Archbishop  Laud's  Speeches  on  the  Liturgy.  Oxford. 


Archbishop  Laud. 


107 


quence  is  one  weak  phenomenon  instead  of  two  strong 
ones ;  for  the  probability  is,  that  the  two  opposite  ele¬ 
ments  of  character  would  have  been  positively  improved 
and  heightened,  instead  of  being  nullified,  by  the  antagonism ; 
and  that  each  would  have  been  the  better  for  the  opposition  of 
the  other.  It  is  hardly  paradoxical  to  say,  that  a  friendly 
hand  is  almost  as  capable  of  being  disadvantageous  to  a 
portrait  as  a  hostile  one.  The  effect  of  the  one  touch  is 
favourable  but  mawkish,  of  the  other  malignant  but  real. 
We  have  to  go  to  the  enemy  for  colours  which  the  friend  will 
not  give  us.  And  perhaps  the  joint  production  of  both  parties 
is  a  more  really  interesting  likeness,  after  all,  to  an  eye  that 
can  embrace  and  combine  them,  than  the  purely  and  exclu¬ 
sively  friendly  one. 

Laud  is  regarded  too  generally  in  the  one  light  of  a  zealous 
champion  of  forms  and  ceremonies,  an  uncompromising  advo¬ 
cate  of  rubrical  uniformity.  He  was  certainly  this ;  but  he 
was  a  great  many  other  things  too  ;  and  in  the  department  of 
character  additions  tell  more  than  simply  arithmetically  ;  they 
enlarge,  elevate,  alter  the  whole  nature  of  a  man.  The  political 
department,  e.g.  in  Laud,  throws  depth  on  the  ecclesiastical, 
and  each  benefits  the  other.  But  the  biographer  is  afraid  of 
the  politician.  The  combination  of  bishop  and  politician  has 
a  worldly  look,  and  seems  to  give  an  advantage  to  Puritans. 
The  politician  is  accordingly  put  in  the  background  :  the  pious 
upholder  of  vestments  and  the  Church-service  is  presented  to 
us.  The  age  catches  the  character,  and  expresses  it  in  its  own 
way  ;  and  the  stickler  for  obsolete  forms,  the  obstinate  old 
zealot  about  trifles,  becomes  the  one  popular  figure  of  Laud. 

We  must  pay  our  tribute,  however,  to  the  contemporary 
historian,  to  the  vivid,  amusing,  clever  Heylin.  Heylin  was 
one  of  those  persons  whom  Laud  picked  up  in  the  course  of 
his  administration  (as  he  did  many  others),  and  set  to  work 
in  the  Church  cause.  He  wrote  books  and  pamphlets  when 
Laud  wanted  them,  and  supplied  the  Archbishop  with  uni¬ 
versity  and  clerical  information.  It  was  Laud’s  character  to 
be  most  good-natured  and  familiar  with  his  subordinates — 
with  any  who  worked  under  him,  and  did  what  he  told  them  ; 


io8 


Archbishop  Land. 


and  Heylin  thoroughly  enjoyed  and  relished  his  good  graces. 
There  is  an  amusing  under- stream  of  self-congratulation 
throughout  his  biography,  at  his  participation  of  the  great 
man’s  patronage.  He  seems  to  have  been  occasionally  told 
secrets  and  let  behind  the  scenes — a  matter  of  great  pride  to 
him.  He  communicates  the  information,  with  a  kind  of  sly, 
invisible  smirk  in  the  background,  and  a  nudge  under  the 
table  to  the  reader — to  remind  him  of  the  Archbishop’s  clever¬ 
ness,  not  forgetting  the  biographer’s.  The  former  would  not 
have  been  particularly  obliged,  on  one  or  two  occasions,  for  the 
candid  display  of  his  strategics,  and  bits  of  necessary  state  ¬ 
craft,  in  his  devoted  admirer’s  pages.  Heylin  gives  us  his 
own  account  of  his  first  reception  by  Laud  ;  and  it  is  very 
significant  of  the  relationship  of  the  two.  The  flattering 
attentions  of  the  Metropolitan  and  Premier  to  the  “  poor 
Oxford  scholar  ” — that  is  to  say,  a  fellow  of  Magdalen,  as  Heylin 
was — were  quite  enough  to  win  a  person  of  his  temperament ; 
and  the  courteous  arts  of  the  great  man  and  the  pleased 
sensations  of  the  little  man  are  equally  characteristic. 

“  Being  kept  to  his  chamber  at  the  time  with  lameness,  I 
had,”  says  Heylin,  “  both  the  happiness  of  being  taken  into 
his  special  knowledge  of  me,  and  the  opportunity  of  a  longer 
conference  than  I  should  otherwise  have  expected.  I  went 
to  present  my  service  to  him,  as  he  was  preparing  for  this 
journey,  and  was  appointed  to  attend  him  the  same  day 
sevennight,  when  I  might  presume  on  his  return.  Coming 
precisely  at  the  time,  I  heard  of  his  mischance,  and  that  he 
kept  himself  to  his  chamber ;  but  order  had  been  left  among 
his  servants  that  if  I  came,  he  should  be  made  acquainted 
with  it ;  which  being  done  accordingly,  I  was  brought  into  his 
chamber,  where  I  found  him  sitting  on  a  chair,  with  his  lame 
leg  resting  on  a  pillow.  Commanding  that  nobody  should 
come  and  interrupt  him  till  he  called  for  them,  he  caused  me 
to  sit  down  by  him,  inquired  first  into  the  course  of  my 
studies,  which  he  well  approved  of,  exhorting  me  to  hold 
myself  in  that  moderate  course  in  which  he  found  me.  He 
fell  afterwards  to  discourse  of  some  passages  in  Oxford  in 
which  I  was  specially  concerned,  and  told  me  thereupon  the 


Archbishop  Laud. 


109 


story  of  such  opposition  as  had  been  made  against  him  in  the 
University  by  Archbishop  Abbot  and  others,  and  encouraged 
me  not  to  shrink,  if  I  had  already,  and  should  hereafter  find 
the  like.  I  was  with  him  thus,  remotis  arbitris ,  almost  two 
hours.  It  grew  almost  12  of  the  clock,  and  then  he  knocked 
for  his  servants  to  come  to  him.  He  dined  that  day  in  his 
ordinary  dining-room,  which  was  the  first  time  he  had  done  so 
since  his  mishap.  He  caused  me  to  tarry  dinner  with  him, 
and  used  me  with  no  small  respect,  which  was  much  noticed 
by  some  gentlemen  (Elphinstone,  one  his  Majesty’s  cupbearers, 
being  one  of  the  company)  who  dined  that  day  with  him.  A 
passage,  I  confess,  not  pertinent  to  my  present  story,  but  such 
as  I  have  good  precedent  for  from  Philip  de  Comines,  who 
telleth  us  impertinently  of  the  time  of  his  leaving  the  Duke  of 
Burgundy’s  service  to  betake  himself  to  the  employments  of 
King  Louis  xi.” 

Heylin’s  biography,  however,  only  gives  one  side  of  the 
Archbishop ;  it  exhibits  the  shrewd  tactician,  the  active 
indefatigable  man  of  business,  the  spirited  Church  champion. 
Heylin  realises  acutely  the  religious  politics  and  party  aspects 
of  the  times ;  he  catches  phrases,  watchwords,  party  notes  : 
a  cant  term,  a  piece  of  abuse  that  he  has  treasured  up,  lets  you 
into  the  whole  feeling  of  the  time  being,  like  a  newspaper. 
Laud,  the  ecclesiastical  combatant  and  schemer,  figures  in 
strong  colours  throughout ;  but  we  are  not  let  into  the  inner 
and  deeper  part  of  his  character  :  the  homo  interior  was  not  in 
Heylin’s  line.  We  read  through  his  book  and  have  barely  a 
glimpse  of  a  whole  inward  sphere  of  thought  and  feeling  in 
which  Laud’s  mind  was  moving  all  the  time.  We  go  to 
another  document  for  this  :  the  Diary  reveals  a  different  man 
from  what  the  active  scene  presented ;  and  a  fresh  and  rather 
opposite  field  of  character  appears.  Heylin’s  portrait  has  a 
new  colour  thrown  upon  it  by  the  connection  ;  we  look  on  the 
stirring  features  with  another  eye  when  we  have  seen  the 
quiescent  ones ;  the  bustle  of  State  and  Church  politics  covers 
an  interior  of  depth  and  feeling ;  the  courtier,  statesman,  and 
man  of  the  world  kneels  before  the  cross  ;  and  we  gain  a 
different  idea  of  him  altogether. 


I  10 


Archbishop  Laud. 


William  Laud  was  born  at  Reading  in  1573.  His  father 
was  a  clothier  of  that  town.  His  mother’s  family  had  rather 
more  pretensions,  and  boasted  a  City  knighthood  in  the  person 
of  Sir  William  Webb,  a  Lord  Mayor  of  London,  and  a  salter  by 
trade,  Laud’s  maternal  uncle.  The  Puritans  did  not  forget  this 
fact  of  a  mercantile  origin  in  his  days  of  power,  and  ornamented 
it  with  very  circumstantial  additions.  He  was  born  “  of  poor 
and  obscure  parents  in  a  cottage,”  was  Prynne’s  account ;  he 
“  was  born  between  the  stocks  and  the  cage,”  says  the  Scots’ 
Scout.  “  A  courtier,”  he  adds,  “  one  day  chanced  to  speak 
thereof,  whereupon  his  Grace  removed  them  thence,  and  pulled 
down  his  father’s  thatched  house,  and  built  a  fair  one  in  the 
place  ;  ” — a  gratuitous  and  rather  ungracious  mode  of  stating 
the  simple  fact  that  Laud  built  and  endowed  an  almshouse  in 
his  native  town.  The  subject  of  his  birth  was  a  prolific  one  ; 
and  “  libel  after  libel,”  as  he  said,  “  raked  him  out  of  the  dung¬ 
hill.”  Even  with  his  long  and  intimate  experience  of  the 
power  of  puritanical  language,  Laud  was  sometimes  horrified 
with  the  intensity  of  abuse  which  poured  in  upon  him  on  the 
subject  of  his  origin.  Heylin  found  him  one  day  walking  in 
his  garden  at  Lambeth,  looking  “  troubled  ” — disgusted,  in 
modern  language.  Laud  showed  him  one  of  these  virulent 
papers ;  he  pleaded  guilty  to  the  fact  “  of  not  having  the  good 
fortune  to  be  born  a  gentleman  ;  ” — “  yet  he  thanked  God  he  had 
been  born  of  honest  parents,  who  lived  in  a  plentiful  condition, 
employed  many  poor  people  in  their  way,  and  left  a  good  report 
behind  them.”  “  And  therefore,”  continues  Heylin,  “  begin¬ 
ning  to  clear  up  his  countenance,  I  told  him  as  presently  as  I 
durst,  that  Pope  Sixtus  the  Fifth,  as  stout  a  Pope  as  ever  wore 
the  triple  crown,  but  a  poor  man’s  son,  did  use  familiarly  to 
say,  in  contempt  of  such  libels  as  frequently  were  made  against 
him,  that  he  was  domo  natus  illustri,  because  the  sunbeams, 
passing  through  the  broken  walls  and  ragged  roof,  illustrated 
every  corner  of  that  homely  cottage  in  which  he  was  born — 
with  which  facetiousness  of  that  Pope  (so  applicable  to  the 
present  occasion)  he  seemed  very  well  pleased.”  We  doubt 
whether  Heylin’s  precise  case  in  point  would  have  operated  as 
a  consolation  to  a  very  marked  aspiration  after  high  birth,  but 


Archbishop  Latid. 


1 1 1 


Laud’s  disgust  was  occasioned  by  the  animus  of  his  libellers, 
and  not  by  the  fact  of  his  own  origin. 

“  In  my  infancy,”  says  the  Diary,  “  I  was  in  danger  of  death 
by  sickness.”  Laud  carried  with  him  from  his  birth  one  of 
those  constitutions  which  are  always  ailing,  and  never  failing. 
He  had  never  good  health  for  long  together ;  and  his  fierce 
attacks  of  illness  brought  him  sometimes  to  death’s  door, 
leaving  him,  however,  as  strong  for  work  again  as  ever,  as  soon 
as  they  were  passed.  A  creaking  gate  lasts  ;  weakness  and 
iron  often  go  together  in  the  bodily  constitution.  There  are 
different  kinds  of  health  :  rude  and  full ;  slender  and  wiry  ;  in¬ 
doors  health,  and  out-of-doors  health;  reading  health,  and  hunt¬ 
ing  health  ;  the  healths  capacitating  respectively  for  mental  and 
for  bodily  work.  Laud  had  the  weakly  kind  of  health  eminently  ; 
a  vigorous,  obstinate,  indoors  constitution.  His  ailings,  except 
when  they  broke  out  violently,  seem  only  to  have  operated  as 
a  sort  of  unconscious  stimulus  and  mental  mustard-plaster, 
perpetually  keeping  him  up  to  his  work — his  internal  Puritans. 

He  went  to  the  school  of  his  native  town,  and  had  the 
benefit  of  a  disciplinarian  hand  over  him.  “  After  a  wonderful 
preservation  in  his  infancy,”  we  are  told,  “  from  a  very  sore  fit 
of  sickness,  he  had  a  happy  education  in  his  childhood  under 
a  very  severe  schoolmaster.”  He  was  appreciated,  however, 
for  his  master  “  frequently  said  to  him,  that  he  hoped  he  would 
remember  Leading  School  when  he  became  a  great  man.” 
One  of  the  prognostics,  it  is  curious  to  notice,  was  his  “dreams:” 
the  boy  had  “  strange  dreams  ;  ”  the  religious  grotesquenesses, 
superstitions,  or  whatever  critics  may  call  them,  of  the  Diary, 
seem  to  have  been  born  with  him.  We  will  add  that  he  must 
have  been  exceedingly  clever  to  have  made  the  recital  of  them 
tell  so  much  in  his  favour.  There  is  no  subject-matter  that 
tasks  human  power  more  to  make  interesting.  We  have  no 
disrespect  for  the  thing  itself,  for  the  dream  per  se ,  for  the 
world  of  sight,  sound,  and  action  that  sleep  introduces  us  into : 
nevertheless  nature  herself  yawns,  and  the  face  of  social  life 
lengthens  into  despondency,  as  soon  as  ever  the  public  com¬ 
munication  of  a  dream  commences — as  soon  as  ever  the 
preparatory  note  and  prelude  is  heard — “  What  do  you  think  I 


I  12 


Archbishop  Laud. 


dreamed  of  last  night ? ”  A  mans  dream  interests  himself 
because  it  is  his  own — a  plain  intimation  of  reason  that  it  is 
meant  for  his  own  peculiar  enjoyment.  However,  the  little 
Laud  had,  it  appears,  very  striking  dreams  ;  and  his  school¬ 
master  saw  mind  in  them.  Genuine  nature  gives  a  character 
wherever  she  is  the  originator ;  and  the  native  productions  of 
a  soil  have  a  charm  about  them.  We  like  Laud’s  dreams  for 
being  horn  with  him.  He  seems  to  have  a  right  to  them  ;  and 
their  shadowy  fragmentary  character  shows  an  imaginative 
element  in  his  mind,  and  points  back  to  a  more  vivid  childish 
prototype.  He  appears,  in  his  school-days,  to  have  been  what 
is  called  a  regular  sharp  boy :  and  his  “  witty  speeches, 
generous  spirit,  great  apprehensions,  and  notable  perform¬ 
ances,”  raised  people’s  expectations  about  him. 

At  sixteen  he  went  up  to  Oxford,  and  entered  at  St.  John’s 
College  ;  became  a  scholar  the  next  year,  and  four  years  after¬ 
wards  fellow.  “  He  was  at  that  time,”  we  are  informed  by 
Wood,  “ esteemed  by  all  who  knew  him  (being  little  in  stature), 
a  very  forward,  confident,  and  zealous  person ;  ”  a  not  un¬ 
natural  line  of  character  for  a  young  man  to  fall  into,  who  had 
great  talents,  great  earnestness,  a  strong  religious  bias,  and  a 
considerable  disgust  for  the  tone  of  opinion  which  surrounded 
him. 

The  religious  atmosphere  of  the  University  at  this  time 
was,  as  is  well  known,  Calvinistic  in  the  extreme.  The  de¬ 
veloped  Eeformation  theology  was  predominant  there.  The 
divinity  professorships  were  in  the  hands  of  strong  Calvinists  ; 
and  the  Genevan  doctrines  were  the  regular  authorised  teaching 
and  standard  of  the  place.  First  in  power  in  the  Univer¬ 
sity  was  Ur.  Lawrence  Humphrey,  President  of  Magdalen 
College,  and  Kegius  Professor  of  Divinity ;  a  disciple  of 
Zwinglius,  and  a  correspondent  of  Calvin.  “  The  best  that 
could  be  said  of  him,”  says  Heylin,  “  by  one  who  commonly 
speaks  well  of  that  party  [the  historian  Fuller],  was,  that  he 
was  a  moderate  and  conscientious  nonconformist.”  He  was, 
however,  a  clever  man,  a  fluent  lecturer,  and  master  of  a  good 
Latin  style.  The  Divinity  Schools  were  his  great  field ;  and 
his  lectures,  which  consisted  of  strong  expositions  of  all  the 


Archbishop  Laud. 


JI3 

Calvinistic  tenets,  and  fierce  denunciations  of  the  Pope,  moulded 
the  theology  of  the  University  students.  “  He  sowed  in  the 
Divinity  Schools,”  as  we  are  told,  “  such  seeds  of  Calvinism, 
and  laboured  to  create  in  the  younger  men  such  a  strong  hate 
against  the  Papists,  as  if  nothing  but  divine  truths  were  to  he 
found  in  the  one,  and  nothing  hut  abominations  to  be  seen  in 
the  other.”  His  college  felt  its  head  :  Magdalen  “  was  stocked 
with  a  generation  of  nonconformists,”  and  became  a  con¬ 
spicuous  nursery  and  hot-bed  of  Calvinism.  A  change  has 
passed  over  the  face  of  that  society  since  these  religious 
movements.  The  uncongenial  effervescence,  under  a  happier 
influence,  subsided,  and  has  not  returned ;  and  Lawrence 
Humphrey,  were  he  to  visit  the  scene  of  his  labours  again, 
would  have  to  mourn  over  his  lapsed  college ;  the  rigours  of 
Puritanism  no  longer  predominant  within  its  walls ;  the  five 
points  untouched  ;  and  a  fellow  of  Magdalen  not  ipso  facto  a 
supralapsarian. 

The  Calvinistic  party  had  aid  from  the  political,  world. 
Humphrey  had  a  warm  coadjutor,  indeed,  in  the  Lady  Margaret 
Professor  ;  but  as  if  this  was  not  staff  enough  for  the  work, — 
as  if  these  two,  says  Heylin,  “  did  not  make  the  distance  wide 
enough  between  the  Churches,  a  new  lecture  must  needs  be 
founded.”  Hew  theological  lectures  were  the  Protestantising 
machinery  of  those  times,  as  they  have  been  since.  The 
government  of  the  day  favoured  the  Calvinistic  side.  Walsing- 
ham,  the  Secretary  of  State,  and  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  Chan¬ 
cellor  of  the  University,  both  lent  a  ready  ear  to  the  suggestions 
of  Humphrey  and  his  school ;  and  Oxford  Puritanism  was  in 
close  and  intimate  alliance  with  political  power  at  headquarters. 
Walsingham  is  described  by  our  historian  as  “  a  man  of  great 
political  ability,  an  extreme  hater  of  the  Popes  and  Church  of 
Rome,  and  no  less  favourable  unto  those  of  the  Puritan  faction.” 
Doctor  John  Rainolds,  President  of  Corpus  Christi  College, 
a  learned  and  rigorous  Puritan,  stood  high  in  Walsingham’s 
good  graces ;  he  was  appointed  to  the  new  lectureship,  and 
joined  the  other  official  disseminators  of  the  Calvinistic 
doctrines  in  the  University. 

The  coalition  engendered  a  great  feeling  of  security  and 

M.E.-I.]  H 


1  r4 


Archbishop  Laud. 


strength  in  the  party.  A  party  feels  itself  strong  that  has  a 
hack  to  lean  against ;  that  has  reinforcements  to  call  in  when 
it  wants  them.  Confidence  is  seated  in  a  background ;  and 
the  mind  of  the  partisan  expands  with  self-complacency  and 
hope  as  it  feels  the  remoter  and  more  exoteric  circle  of  sympathy 
and  assistance.  “Our  friends  in  the  government” — “our 
Parliamentary  supporters” — “our  friends  in  the  country” — 
and  “  our  friends  in  town,”  are  indefinite  sources  of  self-gratu- 
latory  strength  to  a  side,  and  the  sure  aid  at  a  distance  has 
double  weight  at  home.  Parties  under  such  circumstances 
grow  easy,  boastful,  and  contemptuous ;  they  ride  over  the 
field,  clear  their  way  unscrupulously,  vote  opposition  to  be 
ipso  facto  absurd,  urge  the  territorial  right,  implant  themselves 
in  the  soil,  engraft  their  own  system  and  character,  feel  at 
home,  and  cover  the  ground.  The  Calvinistic  party  at  Oxford 
enjoyed  their  alliance  with  the  political  world,  and  nipped  all 
opposition  to  them  in  the  bud,  by  simple  wmight  and  impetus. 
They  had  it  all  their  own  way  :  those  who  thought  differently 
from  them  kept  their  own  opinions  to  themselves,  rather  than 
face  the  storm  of  censure  and  vituperation  which  they  would 
have  encountered  by  expressing  them.  Heylin  mentions  two 
names  of  Fellows  of  colleges  as  the  only  public,  open,  orthodox 
ones  existing  in  the  place  at  this  time.  There  doubtless  was 
another  school  all  the  while  in  embryo,  but  it  was  only  an 
embryo  one.  It  had  not  courage  to  come  out  or  voice  to  make 
itself  heard.  It  wanted  a  leader  and  mouthpiece,  somebody 
to  bring  it  out  and  make  it  speak,  elicit  its  powers,  encourage 
its  efforts,  and  mould  it  into  shape  and  compactness. 

Oxford  was  only  a  sample  of  the  rest  of  the  country.  The 
Beformation  in  this  country  ended  in  showing  itself  a  decidedly 
Calvinistic  movement.  The  theology  of  our  native  reformers, 
where  it  did  not  run  spontaneously  in  this  direction  (as  it  did 
not  in  some),  was  too  weak  to  resist  its  irruptions  ;  and  Calvin 
and  the  foreign  reformers  stepped  in  almost  as  soon  as  the 
movement  had  begun,  threw  their  whole  impetus  into  it,  and 
turned  it  their  own  way.  A  movement  shows  itself  in  its 
fruits  :  the  Beformation  produced  Calvinism :  Calvinism  was 
its  immediate  offspring,  its  genuine  matter-of-fact  expansion. 


Archbishop  Laud. 


1 1 5 

The  divines  that  the  Eeformation  directly  produced,  its  actual 
disciples  and  sons,  were  everywhere  of  this  school ;  and  the 
Calvinistic  foliage  sprouted  with  all  the  freedom  and  exuberance 
of  nature. 

Laud  commenced  his  course  in  this  state  of  University 
theology ;  and  had  to  push  his  way  through  this  adverse 
system.  He  fought  at  a  disadvantage.  He  did  not  start  with 
Laudian  station  and  authority :  far  from  it ;  he  had  authority 
regularly  against  him,  and  stood  a  simple  individual,  and  Fellow 
of  a  college,  against  the  whole  official  stream  of  academical 
opinion,  against  the  favourite  and  cardinal  doctrines  of  vice- 
chancellors,  heads  of  houses,  and  divinity  professors.  Laud’s 
ultimate  historical  position  is  so  prominent  in  our  minds,  that 
we  hardly  think  of  him  in  his  previous  humbler  one ;  as  if  he 
had  never  not  been  an  Archbishop,  and  been  born,  on  the 
principle  of  Minerva’s  leap  out  of  Jupiter’s  head,  in  full-blown 
metropolitan  maturity  and  canonicals.  The  Caroline  Court  and 
the  Eegale  appear  born  with  him.  We  picture  him  the  man 
of  pomp  and  station  to  begin  with  ;  with  all  the  paraphernalia 
of  ecclesiastical  power  ready-made  to  his  hands,  and  leave 
him  only  the  easy  task  of  laying  down  the  law  and  punishing 
the  rebel,  bringing  down  the  terrors  of  suspension  on  the  non¬ 
conformist  and  of  the  pillory  on  the  libeller.  It  was  very  dif¬ 
ferent  in  fact :  Laud  certainly  made  full  use  of  his  powers,  both 
ecclesiastical  and  secular,  when  he  got  them ;  but  it  was  a  long 
time  before  he  got  them.  He  was  long  all  but  alone,  and  had 
an  up-hill  course.  Dignitaries  condemned,  acquaintances 
avoided,  even  friends  suspected  him  :  he  endured  a  humiliating 
discipline  and  a  severe  succession  of  rubs.  He  laid  his  own 
groundwork,  and  created  his  own  authoritativeness  ;  we  see  the 
result,  and  forget  the  process  which  led  to  it ;  we  antedate  the 
man  of  power,  and  give  him  what  he  made  himself  before  he 
made  it. 

He  appears  before  us,  in  short,  in  the  first  instance,  as  an 
innovator  upon  the  dominant  and  authorised  theology  of  the 
day.  A  High-Churchman  of  the  “  old  school  ”  can  now  appeal 
to  his  sanction  and  name ;  but  Laud  was  not  one  of  an  “  old 
school  ”  himself ;  there  was  no  “  old  school  ”  of  High-Church- 


1 16 


Archbishop  Laud. 


manship  for  him  to  belong  to  ;  the  “  established  school  ”  of  the 
Church  was  then  Calvinistic ;  Calvinism  was  the  theology  of 
the  Church  dignitary,  the  Bishop,  the  Dean,  the  College  Head. 
The  maintainer  of  another  system  had  to  assume  the  character 
which  thinks  for  itself,  and  will  not  follow  the  lead ;  a  free, 
independent,  and  original  one.  Laud’s  High-Churchmanship 
was  no  more  made  to  his  hand  than  his  archiepiscopate.  It 
did  not  come  to  him  in  the  natural  course  of  his  education,  as 
the  teaching  of  the  day,  as  the  regular,  established,  proper, 
decorous,  and  respectable  orthodox  system.  His  orthodoxy 
raised  itself,  was  the  growth  of  his  own  mind  in  opposition  to 
the  prevailing  system,  and  had  to  be  maintained  by  the  force 
of  his  own  judgment  and  taste  against  a  whole  uncongenial  and 
hostile  state  of  contemporary  theology. 

Laud  was  ordained  in  1601  by  Young,  Bishop  of  Bochester. 
The  bishop  “found  his  study  raised  above  the  system  and 
opinions  of  the  age,  upon  the  noble  foundation  of  the  Fathers, 
Councils,  and  the  ecclesiastical  historians,  and  presaged  that,  if 
he  lived,  he  would  be  an  instrument  of  restoring  the  Church 
from  the  narrow  and  private  principles  of  modern  times.” 

A  series  of  collisions,  accordingly,  with  the  University 
authorities  marks  the  first  period  of  Laud’s  theological  career. 
They  began  upon  a  tender  point.  The  authorised  theology  of 
the  Oxford  schools  denied  all  definite  visibility  to  the  Church 
through  the  middle  ages.  The  Pope  was  Antichrist ;  Romish 
orders  were  the  mark  of  the  beast ;  the  Church  of  England  was 
entirely  separated  from  all  connection  with  her  medieval  exist¬ 
ence  ;  and  the  very  idea  of  deriving  her  authority  from  a  Romish 
fountain-head  savoured  of  simple  pollution,  instead  of  the  dignity 
of  antiquity,  to  the  post-Reformation  theologians  of  that  day. 
The  visibility  of  the  Church  took  a  leap  from  the  age  of  the 
Apostles  to  that  of  the  Berengarians  ;  from  the  Berengarians 
it  passed  to  the  Albigenses  ;  from  the  Albigenses  to  the  Wick- 
liffites  ;  from  the  Wickliffites  to  the  Hussites ;  from  the  Hussites 
to  the  congregations  of  Luther  and  Calvin ;  and  from  them  to 
the  English  Reformed  Church.  The  English  Church  was 
made  to  rest  on  a  succession  of  doctrine  purely ;  the  torch  of 
“gospel  light”  had  been  caught  and  passed  on  by  scattered 


Archbishop  Laud. 


ii  7 

bodies  of  true  believers,  one  after  another,  till  it  lit  up  the 
flame  of  the  Reformation :  that  was  the  Church’s  warrant,  and 
the  succession  of  orders  was  simply  beside  the  mark.  Abbot, 
the  future  puritanical  Archbishop,  was  then  Master  of  Uni¬ 
versity  College,  and  Vice-Chancellor,  a  double-dyed  Calvinist, 
and  an  advocate  of  this  theory  especially.  When  Archbishop, 
he  wrote  a  treatise  in  support  of  it.  Laud,  in  an  academical 
exercise  which  he  delivered  shortly  after  his  ordination,  main¬ 
tained  the  formal  ecclesiastical  ground,  and  claimed  a  regular 
legitimate  existence  for  the  medieval  English  Church.  He 
placed  the  authority  of  the  present  Church  upon  that  basis,  and 
traced  its  orders  and  genealogy,  through  the  Roman  Catholic 
hierarchy,  up  to  the  apostles  and  the  primitive  Church.  The 
exercise  gave  great  offence.  Abbot  saw  with  jealousy  the  start 
of  a  young  theological  antagonist,  and  seems  to  have  presaged 
instinctively  the  course  of  the  future  rival,  who  was  to  be  per¬ 
petually  treading  on  his  heels  : — “He  thought  it  a  great  dero¬ 
gation  to  his  parts  and  credit,  that  any  man  should  dare  to 
maintain  the  contrary  of  his  opinion,  and  thereupon  conceived 
a  strong  grudge  against  Laud,  which  no  tract  of  time  could 
either  abolish  or  diminish.” 

His  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Divinity  was  the  next  occasion 
which  brought  him  out.  His  exercises  in  the  schools  main¬ 
tained  the  necessity  of  Episcopacy,  and  the  doctrine  of  baptis¬ 
mal  regeneration.  Both  were  unpopular  doctrines  at  Oxford. 
A  clamour  was  raised  against  him  :  he  was  accused  of  creating 
discord  between  the  English  and  the  other  Reformed  Churches. 
The  doctrine  of  baptismal  regeneration  was  doubly  odious,  too, 
defended  in  the  language  of  Bellarmine.  It  was  thought  an 
insult  to  a  Protestant  University  for  one  of  its  members  to  be 
publicly  quoting  Bellarmine,  and  borrowing  his  arguments 
from  a  Roman  Catholic  controversialist.  The  common- sense 
answer  was,  that  if  the  arguments  were  good,  it  did  not 
signify  where  they  came  from. 

A  sermon  delivered  the  next  year  (1606),  in  the  pulpit  of 
St.  Mary’s,  the  contents  of  which  we  are  not  informed  of, 
brought  down  upon  him  a  vehement  attack  from  Dr.  Henry 
Airay,  Vice-Chancellor  and  Provost  of  Queen’s,  a  pupil  of  the 


1 1 8 


Archbishop  Laud. 


reformer  Bernard  Gilpin,  a  person  of  great  repute  for  gravity, 
learning,  and  sanctity  in  the  puritanical  party,  and  the  popu¬ 
lar  author  of  a  treatise  “  against  bowing  at  the  name  of  Jesus/’ 
Some  passages  in  the  sermon  appeared  “  swperstitionem  ponti- 
ficiam  sapere,”  and  Dr.  Airay  cited  Laud  to  answer  in  his 
court.  The  trial  went  on  for  some  weeks,  and  made  a  stir  in 
the  theological  world.  Laud  showed  great  ability,  spirit,  and 
acuteness  ;  parried  his  opponents  dexterously,  and  got  clear  off 
at  last,  without  any  process  of  retractation  or  apology  to  go 
through.  It  is  a  pity  we  are  entirely  deprived  of  the  details 
of  a  scene  so  highly  characteristic.  Laud  had  his  first  taste 
here  of  a  theological  trial ;  his  last  was  when  he  appeared  at 
the  bar  of  the  House  of  Lords.  His  quickness,  steadiness,  and 
vivacity  carried  him  through  the  academical  ordeal,  and  the 
terrors  of  Dr.  Henry  Airay’s  tribunal.  The  Oxford  Vice- 
Chancellor’s  court  had  no  bill  of  attainder  to  fall  back  upon 
when  a  troublesome  adversary  had  foiled  it ;  the  Lords  were 
better  provided,  and  could  help  themselves  to  ready-made  law 
when  the  statute-book  failed. 

An  antagonist  is  not  disliked  the  less  for  gaining  a  victory, 
or  making  an  escape.  Laud  w~as  regarded  more  and  more  as  a 
dangerous  man :  Abbot  grew  more  bitter  and  splenetic  every 
day.  Dark  rumours  were  set  afloat ;  and  suspicion  was  rife. 
People  were  afraid  of  him,  and  afraid  of  being  seen  with  him. 
“  It  was  a  heresy,”  was  Laud’s  own  account,  “to  speak  to  him, 
and  a  suspicion  of  heresy  to  salute  him  as  he  walked  in  the 
street.”  It  was  dangerous  to  be  seen  in  his  company.  Priends 
even  began  to  be  perplexed  and  suspicious  of  the  formal 
ecclesiastical  bearing  in  his  theology  ;  to  think  him  going  too  far, 
to  profess  not  to  understand  him,  not  to  penetrate  his  mixture 
of  views,  or  get  behind  his  veil.  He  had  a  character  for 
subtlety  and  ambiguity  ;  for  not  telling  people  what  he  was,  or 
where  he  was  going.  He  lived  under  a  cloud.  The  reports 
against  him  reached  the  sister  University  ;  and  Hall,  afterwards 
Bishop  of  Norwich,  writes  to  him  :  “  I  would  I  knew  where  to 
find  you ;  then  I  could  tell  you  how  to  take  direct  arms,  where¬ 
as  now  I  must  pore  and  conjecture.  To-day  you  are  in  the 
tents  of  the  Bomanists,  to-morrow  in  ours,  the  next  day  be- 


Archbishop  Laud . 


i  19 

tween  both,  against  both.  Our  adversaries  think  you  ours,  we 
theirs ;  your  conscience  finds  you  with  both,  and  neither :  I 
flatter  you  not.  This  of  yours  is  the  worst  of  all  tempers. 
How  long  will  you  halt  in  this  indifferency  ?  Eesolve  one 
day,  and  know  at  last  what  you  do  hold,  and  what  you  do  not. 
Cast  off  either  your  wings  or  your  teeth,  and,  loathing  this  bat¬ 
like  nature,  be  either  a  bird  or  a  beast.  To  die  wavering  or 
uncertain,  yourself  will  grant  fearful.  If  you  must  settle, 
when  begin  you  ?  If  you  must  begin,  why  not  now  ?  God 
crieth  with  Jehu,  ‘  Who  is  on  my  side,  who?’  Look  out  at 
your  window  to  Him,  and  in  a  resolute  courage  cast  down  the 
Jezebel  that  hath  bewitched  you.’  Good  Bishop  Hall  is  ob¬ 
viously  sorely  puzzled  with  him  ;  he  sees  in  him  a  change 
upon  the  established  system  of  the  day,  and,  what  is  more 
alarming  still,  something  of  a  departure  from  Bishop  Hall ; 
and  he  does  not  know  what  to  think  of  it. 

A  few  years  passed  and  found  matters  not  improved.  Laud 
preached  on  a  Shrove-Tuesday  a  sermon  reflecting  on  some  of 
the  Puritan  doctrines.  Dr.  Abbot,  brother  of  the  Archbishop, 
and  Divinity  Professor,  was  Vice-Chancellor.  He  bottled  up 
his  indignation  all  Lent,  and  on  Easter  Sunday  burst  out ;  and 
from  the  University  pulpit  at  St.  Peter’s,  delivered  a  strain  of 
theological  invective  sufficiently  open  and  pointed.  Laud  was 
not  present  on  that  occasion,  but  the  discourse  was  re¬ 
delivered,  according  to  custom,  on  the  following  Sunday,  at 
St.  Mary’s ;  and  to  avoid  the  appearance  of  being  absent 
through  fear,  he  went,  and  sat  under  his  castigator.  There 
was  no  attempt  at  disguise  on  the  part  of  the  preacher,  and  all 
eyes  were  fixed  on  Laud  as  the  following  interrogatories  were 
addressed  to  him  from  the  pulpit :  “  Might  not  Christ  say, 
What  art  thou  ?  Bomish  or  English,  Papist  or  Protestant  ? 
Or  what  art  thou  ?  a  mongrel,  composed  of  both  ;  a  Protestant 
by  ordination,  a  Papist  in  point  of  free-will,  inherent  righteous¬ 
ness,  and  the  like.  A  Protestant  in  receiving  the  Sacrament ; 
a  Papist  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Sacrament.  What !  do  you 
think  there  are  two  heavens  ?  If  there  be,  get  you  to  the 
other,  and  place  yourself  there,  for  unto  this  wffiere  I  am  ye 
shall  not  come.”  The  preacher  added  a  spirited  description 


I  20 


Archbishop  Laud. 


of  Laud’s  party  or  set.  “  Some,”  lie  continued,  alluding  to  the 
latter,  “  are  partly  Bomish,  partly  English,  as  occasion  serves 
them,  that  a  man  might  say,  noster  es  an  adversariorum  ?  who, 
under  pretence  of  truth,  and  preaching  against  the  Puritans, 
strike  at  the  heart  and  root  of  the  religion  now  established 
among  us.  They  cannot  plead  that  they  are  accounted  Papists 
because  they  speak  against  the  Puritans,  but,  because  being 
indeed  Papists,  they  speak  nothing  against  them.  If  they  do 
at  any  time  speak  against  the  Papists,  they  do  but  beat  a  little 
about  the  bush,  and  that  but  softly  too,  for  fear  of  waking  and 
disquieting  the  birds  that  are  in  it :  they  speak  nothing  but 
that  wherein  one  Papist  will  speak  against  another,  as  against 
equivocation,  the  Pope’s  temporal  power,  and  the  like,  and 
perhaps  some  of  their  blasphemous  speeches  ;  but  in  the  points 
of  free-will,  justification,  concupiscence  being  a  sin  after 
baptism,  inherent  righteousness,  and  certainty  of  salvation, 
the  Papists  beyond  the  seas  can  say  they  are  wholly  theirs ; 
and  the  recusants  at  home  make  their  boast  of  them.  In  all 
things  they  keep  themselves  so  near  the  brink,  that  upon 
occasion  they  may  step  over  to  them.” 

“  I  came  time  enough,”  said  Laud,  writing  to  his  friend 
Bishop  ISTeil,  shortly  after,  “to  be  at  the  rehearsal  of  this 
sermon,  upon  much  persuasion,  where  I  was  fain  to  sit 
patiently,  and  hear  myself  abused  almost  an  hour  together, 
being  pointed  at  as  I  sat.  Eor  this  present  I  would  fain  have 
taken  no  notice  of  it,  but  that  the  whole  University  did  apply 
it  to  me ;  and  my  own  friends  tell  me  I  shall  sink  my  credit 
if  I  answer  not  Dr.  Abbot  in  his  own.  Nevertheless,  in  a 
business  of  this  kind,  I  will  not  be  swayed  from  a  patient 
course.”  Perfect  coolness  and  good  temper  marked  Laud’s 
academical  career  throughout.  The  theological  tribunal  and 
the  pulpit ;  rumour,  suspicion,  and  black  looks  ;  vice-chancel¬ 
lors,  heads  of  houses,  and  divinity  professors  were  all  at  him ; 
they  put  themselves  into  agitation,  but  not  him.  Dignitaries 
were  jealous  of  the  junior ;  Calvinists  were  disgusted  at  the 
theologian;  but  the  junior  and  the  theologian  himself  was 
quite  calm.  Laud  pursued  his  own  line,  kept  his  object 
before  him,  and  went  quietly  on,  never  giving  way  an 


Archbishop  Laud. 


12  i 


inch,  but  never  at  the  same  time  troubling  himself  to  re¬ 
taliate.  Attacks  ancl  invectives  simply  spent  themselves  in 
the  air,  as  far  as  he  was  concerned,  and  were  without  practical 
effect.  His  mode  of  aggression  showed  the  same  temper,  was 
firm  and  continuous,  taking  advantage  of  opportunities ;  bold 
when  there  was  a  blow  to  be  hit ;  but  ordinarily  quiet,  and  work¬ 
ing  under  rather  than  above  ground.  He  seems  to  have  gone 
on  the  rule  of  keeping  as  much  out  of  scrapes  as  he  could, 
consistently  with  his  public  line  :  and  to  get  into  one  was  an 
instantaneous  call  upon  all  the  faculties  of  his  mind  to  the 
rescue ;  an  evoker  of  all  his  cleverness  and  ready  wit  to  get 
him  out  of  it  again.  An  exercise  for  a  degree,  a  sermon  at 
St.  Mary’s,  was  turned  to  account,  and  made  a  theological 
weapon.  He  takes  up  some  definite  Church  doctrine — epi¬ 
scopacy,  baptismal  regeneration,  or  whatever  it  may  be,  and 
puts  it  strongly  forward.  If  he  is  called  to  account  for  it,  still 
the  thing  is  done  :  an  inquisition  on  the  sermon,  an  attack 
from  the  pulpit,  cannot  prevent  that  fact ;  the  coast  is  soon 
clear,  and  he  is  quiet  again,  and  resumes  his  ordinary  course. 
It  is  remarkable  that  no  charge  of  violence  or  hot-headedness 
appears  against  him  through  this  period.  His  enemy,  Abbot, 
accuses  him  of  cunning  and  underhand  work,  but  not  of  any 
violence  ;  the  former  is,  of  course,  the  charge  made,  where  the 
latter  cannot  be. 

Ten  years  of  this  course  had  passed,  when  the  Presidency 
of  St.  John’s  became  vacant  by  the  promotion  of  Buckridge  to 
the  see  of  Rochester.  Laud  had  been  working  his  way,  and 
been  gaining  influence — over  his  own  college  especially.  He 
stood  for  the  Presidency ;  and  the  whole  zeal  and  activity  of 
the  puritanical  party  were  instantly  called  into  play  to  oppose 
him.  Abbot  was  indefatigable ;  the  University  dignitaries 
were  immediately  in  communication  with  the  Government,  and 
the  Chancellor  Ellesmere  received  private  notices  of  Laud 
being  a  dangerous  man,  and  having  “  papistical”  leanings,  and 
of  the  necessity  of  keeping  him  “  out  of  any  place  of  govern¬ 
ment  in  the  University.”  Ellesmere  was  gained ;  Ellesmere 
had  possession  of  the  King’s  ear,  and  Laud’s  election  seemed 
to  be  fairly  done  for,  before  a  single  vote  in  St.  John’s  had 


122 


Archbishop  Laud. 


been  taken.  Land  was  himself  disabled  at  the  time  from 
doing  anything,  being  laid  up  with  one  of  his  illnesses  in 
London,  and  too  weak  to  attempt  a  journey,  or  even  to  wTrite  a 
single  line  to  his  friends  on  the  subject.  However,  the  voting 
came  on,  and  he  had  a  majority.  It  is  a  proof  of  the  extra¬ 
ordinary  excitement  which  the  election  had  created,  that  one 
of  the  Fellows  at  this  very  moment  snatched  the  paper  con¬ 
taining  the  votes  out  of  the  hands  of  the  college  officer,  and 
tore  it  in  pieces.  The  evidence  of  the  election  was  thus  dis¬ 
posed  of,  and  Laud’s  opponents  appealed  to  the  Crown,  and 
pushed  for  an  absolutely  royal  appointment,  quashing  all  the 
college  votes. 

Laud  had  an  intercessor  with  James,  however,  in  the 
person  of  Bishop  Neil  of  Durham.  The  appeal  came  before 
James  in  person  ;  he  heard  both  parties  for  the  space  of  three 
hours,  and  concluded  by  declaring  Laud  President  of  St. 
John’s.  The  day  of  the  decision  was  August  29,  u  the  day  of 
the  decollation  of  St.  John  Baptist,”  adds  the  Diary.  Laud 
was  a  great  observer  of  all  coincidences  of  days,  and  did  not 
pass  over  the  coincidence  of  his  being  declared  President  of 
St.  John’s  on  St.  John’s  Day. 

Placed  at  the  head  of  his  college,  he  instantly  adopted  the 
amiable  line ;  forgave  and  tranquillised,  and  threw  oil  upon 
the  angry  waters.  He  was  particularly  affectionate  to  the 
Bellow  who  had  torn  up  the  scrutiny  paper.  College  propriety 
demanded,  of  course,  some  judicial  notice  of  such  a  disorderly 
proceeding,  and  a  solemn  tribunal  sat  upon  the  offender.  But 
authority  was  satisfied  with  showing  itself,  and  then  graciously 
descended  from  the  judicial  chair,  and  embraced  the  criminal. 
He  was  a  clever  man,  and  capable  of  being  useful.  Laud 
took  him  into  favour,  and  paid  him  great  attention.  He 
afterwards  made  him  his  chaplain,  gave  him  preferment,  and 
married  him  to  his  niece  ;  and  finally  raised  him  to  the  very 
Presidency  which  had  been  the  subject  of  all  the  commotion. 
“To  the  other  Bellows,”  continues  Heylin,  “who  had  opposed 
him  in  his  election,  he  always  showed  a  fair  and  equal  counten¬ 
ance,  hoping  to  gain  them  by  degrees ;  but  if  he  found  any 
to  be  intractable,  not  easily  to  be  gained  by  favours,  he  would 


Archbishop  Laud. 


123 

find  some  handsome  way  or  other  to  remove  them  out  of 
college,  that  others,  not  engaged  upon  either  side,  might  suc¬ 
ceed  in  their  places.  Notwithstanding  all  this  care,  the  faction 
still  held  up  against  him,  the  younger  fry  inclining  to  the 
same  side  which  had  been  taken  by  their  tutors.”  Persever¬ 
ance,  however,  won  the  field  at  last. 

We  now  quit  the  Oxford  scene  for  a  more  expansive  one, 
and  Laud’s  real  life  begins.  He  steps  out  of  the  threshold. 
A  college  headship  does  not  ordinarily  figure  as  the  starting- 
point  ;  it  is  more  commonly  the  harbour  than  the  port  of  exit, 
and  rewards  exertions  oftener  than  stimulates  them  ;  it  does 
not  often  send  either  a  political  or  ecclesiastical  adventurer 
into  the  world.  It  did  in  his  case.  Laud  did  not  feel  the 
satisfying  influences  of  station.  The  common  tendency  of 
minds  to  rest  upon  their  oars,  and  repose  at  the  first  stage  of 
their  progress — to  erect  the  templa  serena  on  the  very  first 
elevated  spot — to  think  they  have  done  enough  as  soon  as  they 
have  done  anything  at  all — to  enjoy  dignified  ease — to  give  up 
growth  and  abandon  themselves  to  efflorescence,  was  not  his 
failing.  The  President  of  St  John’s  immediately  set  out  for  a 
terra  incognita ,  and  entered  upon  a  wholly  new  sphere  of  exer¬ 
tion,  and  line  of  life.  At  home  in  one  department,  Laud  was 
instantly  a  beginner  in  another ;  and  the  labourer  and  drudge 
on  the  large  political  field  was  more  to  his  taste  than  the 
University  dignitary.  His  career  in  Oxford  had  done  what  he 
wanted — drawn  him  out,  given  him  an  experience,  exercised 
his  talent,  and  shown  in  what  direction  it  lay.  He  could  now 
apply  what  he  had  got  to  a  fresh  sphere,  and  the  University 
tactician  grew  into  the  Church’s  statesman. 

Laud  is  our  last  specimen  of  a  very  dominant  class  once — 
the  class  of  statesmen-ecclesiastic.  The  character  is  not  a 
popular  one  at  the  present  day  ;  and  we  do  not  know  whether, 
in  the  present  state  of  society,  such  a  union  of  positions  is 
natural  or  desirable.  In  ages  of  the  Church’s  power,  the 
Church  is  naturally  more  political  than  she  is  in  her  ages  of 
weakness.  Genuine  ecclesiastical  influence,  imbibed,  and  felt, 
and  acting  over  society,  forms  a  suitable  atmosphere  for  an 
ecclesiastical  statesman,  when  another  state  of  opinion  does 


Archbishop  Laud. 


1 24 

not.  In  the  middle  ages,  temporal  power  was  actually  put 
into  the  Church’s  hands  by  the  world.  The  world  liked  to 
have  its  statesmen  priests,  and  priests  accordingly  became  its 
statesmen.  The  combination  was  a  natural  phenomenon  of 
the  day,  as  much  as  feudalism  and  chivalry ;  particular  classes 
were  jealous  of  the  Church,  but  the  state  of  opinion,  as  a  whole, 
put  power — political,  temporal  power — into  her  hands.  She 
found  herself  in  possession  of  it ;  she  could  not  help  exerting  a 
vast  overwhelming  influence  with  respect  to  all  sorts  of  sub¬ 
jects,  ecclesiastical  and  secular,  upon  the  public  mind.  She 
was  a  spiritual  society  indeed,  but  she  was  also  an  actual  living 
and  human  one,  in  intimate  contact  with  the  world  ;  and  her 
exertion  and  interference  in  the  social  system  was  called  for 
and  expected.  With  power  dc  facto  lodged  in  her,  she  was 
responsible  for  what  became  of  it,  and  her  natural  course  was 
to  administer  it  herself,  instead  of  letting  it  get  into  worse 
hands.  The  case  is  different  when  the  Church  is  weak  ;  the 
effort  would  be  artificial.  She  does  not  strain  after  power,  and 
snatch  it  eagerly  out  of  the  world’s  hands ;  she  does  not  care 
for  it  on  her  own  account ;  and  therefore,  if  the  world  does  not 
voluntarily  give  it  her,  she  does  not  seek  for  it.  She  ad¬ 
ministers  it'  if  she  has  it,  but  she  does  not  want  to  have  it,  if 
people  do  not  want  to  give  it.  She  does  not  accept  it  from 
reluctant  hands,  or  legislate  for  a  jealous  and  mistrusting  age. 

Laud,  in  his  day,  just  saw  the  last  remaining  vestiges  of 
the  old  system  :  the  vitality  gone,  the  case  still  partially 
existing.  The  form  of  the  old  idea  of  the  statesman-ecclesi¬ 
astic  survived.  The  age  rested  under  the  last  shadow  of  the 
medieval  empire ;  and  the  times  in  which  bishops  were  set  at 
the  political  helm,  and  the  Stapledons,  the  Wykeliams,  and  the 
Waynfletes  of  the  day  were  our  Lord  High  Chancellors  and 
Lord  High  Treasurers,  had  still  a  faint  reflection  in  the  position 
which  even  the  post-Reformation  prelates  occupied  in  the 
English  Court,  the  seats  in  the  privy  council,  the  employment 
on  the  foreign  embassy.  A  class  of  higher  clergy  were  a  good 
deal  about  Court,  and  took  their  share  in  public  matters ;  not 
as  interlopers  in  the  scene,  but  as  if  they  were  at  home,  and 
in  their  natural  place  :  public  opinion  maintained  them  there. 


Archbishop  Laud. 


I25 


Minds  have  their  favourite  aspects  in  which  they  realise 
particular  truths :  Laud  realised  the  Church’s  greatness  under 
this  one.  A  mixture  of  motives  riveted  Laud’s  eye  in  this 
direction.  He  had  caught  the  particular  medieval  idea  of  the 
the  Church’s  position,  as  a  political  estate,  an  heiress,  by  a 
divine  nobility  of  birth,  to  the  world’s  honours  and  elevations. 
The  half-conscious  idea  ran  in  his  thoughts  perpetually ;  and 
incidental  acts  and  expressions  show  the  image  in  his  mind — 
the  form  of  a  Church  which  haunted  him — a  sacerdotal  political 
form  of  a  Church  in  power,  her  orders  nobility,  her  prelates 
pillars  of  the  State.  He  saw  dignity  and  grandeur  upon  her, 
a  splendid  ritual,  grave  munificence  and  hospitality,  the  stamp 
of  venerable  power  on  her  brow,  and  profound  homage  bending 
the  knee  to  her.  A  genuine  hierarchical  taste  vented  itself 
in  the  medieval  combination,  and  the  priestly  idea  took  the 
heightening  feudal  colour  and  political  expression  of  itself.  It 
is  a  mistake  to  charge  him  with  ambition  :  the  feeling  was 
totally  different  from  ambition.  A  sense  of  a  particular  voca¬ 
tion,  and  the  natural  tendency  of  a  set  of  tastes  to  get  scope 
and  exercise,  carried  him  toward  the  position  of  statesman- 
ecclesiastic  ;  but  the  position  had  its  charm  as  the  expression 
of  an  idea,  and  not  as  the  gratification  of  a  personal  aim.  His 
own  elevation  put  his  own  theory  into  execution,  and  he 
realised  the  exaltation  of  his  Church  in  that  of  himself.  He 
had  every  bit  as  much  pleasure  in  putting  Juxon  into  the 
office  of  Lord  Treasurer,  or  Archbishop  Spottiswoode  into  the 
Scotch  Chancellorship,  as  he  had  in  any  public  preferment  of 
his  own.  His  track  was  to  be  recognised  everywhere  by  the 
elevation  of  the  Church  and  clergy.  The  feeling  amounted  to 
a  species  of  poetry  in  him  :  the  poetical  element  in  his  mind 
took  the  ecclesiastical  form,  and  pictured  the  revival  of  the 
Church’s  greatness  and  splendour.  “The  Church  has  been 
low  these  hundred  years,  but  I  hope  it  will  flourish  again  in 
another  hundred,”  was  a  saying  of  his  remembered  against  him 
at  his  trial.  A  fancy  and  a  fond  dream  it  may  have  been  : 
the  age  was  not  in  keeping  with  the  aim,  and  it  was  cut  short — 
still  it  was  a  disinterested  dream,  if  it  was  one  ;  and  he  turned 
it  into  a  most  effective  stimulus,  and  invigorated  himself  by  it. 


126 


Archbishop  Laud. 


Whether  true  or  not,  it  was  a  useful  one.  He  seems  to  have 
doubted  it,  mistrusted  it  himself  ;  still  there  it  was — it  stood 
before  him,  and  he  followed  it.  It  was  something  to  follow 
at  any  rate,  something  to  have  before  him ;  it  appeared,  it 
shone  :  the  phantom  was  majestic,  even  if  it  was  a  phantom. 
It  led  him  on  through  stage  after  stage  of  his  work  :  a  medieval 
glow  terminated  the  dark  laborious  vista  ;  and  the  plodder’s 
slow  subterranean  passage  had  an  inward  poetry  to  illuminate 
and  relieve  it. 

The  poetical  feeling  did  not  at  all  supersede  the  strict 
utilitarian  one.  The  Eegale  was  the  great  centre  of  power  in 
that  day,  both  in  Church  and  State  ;  the  Court  the  very  first 
and  most  necessary  instrument  for  the  objects  of  the  Church- 
reformer.  He  was  obliged  to  work  his  way  at  Court,  to  get 
any  of  the  practical  acting  power  of  the  nation  into  his  hands. 
A  hundred  other  things  he  ought  to  be  perhaps,  but  a  courtier 
he  must  be ;  he  must  gain  access  to  the  great  political  lever, 
if  he  was  to  put  a  finger  on  the  ecclesiastical.  The  ins  and 
outs  of  Court  were  an  essential  part  of  his  experience,  and  the 
whole  order  of  things  'went  to  domiciliate  him  first  at  the  focus 
of  the  nation,  in  order  to  obtain  any  spread  of  his  influence 
over  the  general  surface.  Laud  wanted  to  gain  some  ground 
on  which  he  could  work  upon  the  nation  ;  he  wanted  ways  and 
means,  facilities,  sources  of  weight,  and  a  whole  machinery  for 
producing  effects.  He  fixed  his  eye  on  the  Court  as  offering 
such  resources,  such  machinery.  A  natural  turn  for  the  exer¬ 
cise  of  power,  for  tactics,  and  managing — so  strong  a  taste 
in  a  mind  that  feels  itself  to  have  it — sympathised  with 
this  object ;  and  the  whole  political  element  in  Laud’s  character 
mingled  with  the  enthusiastic  in  taking  him  to  a  yet  unex¬ 
plored  mine  of  influence  and  labour — the  Court. 

James  had  just  ascended  the  English  throne,  when 
Laud  made  his  first  entrance  into  Court,  in  the  capacity  of 
King’s  chaplain — a  situation  which  his  patron,  Bishop  Neil, 
procured  for  him,  very  soon  after  his  election  to  the  Presidency 
of  St.  John’s.  The  Stewarts  brought  with  them  a  very  different 
character  to  the  throne,  and  to  the  English  Begale,  from  that  of 
the  Tudor  Elizabeth — a  much  less  imperial  and  a  much  more 


Archbishop  Laud. 


127 


amiable  one  ;  better  tendencies  and  less  firmness  ;  a  temper 
weak  and  difficult  to  keep  up  to  the  mark  when  raised  there, 
but  very  accessible  to  influence  in  the  first  instance.  Elizabeth, 
made  up  as  she  was  of  caprices  and  humours,  kept  up  the  great 
family  trait  with  an  iron  uniformity  ;  hated  the  Puritans,  but 
ground  down  the  Church,  and  with  all  her  High-Church  whims 
was  the  very  reverse  of  the  character  that  is  subject  to  Church 
influence.  The  Stewart  character  was  open  to  this  influence. 
Fresh  charged  with  a  highly  unfavourable  experience  of  Purit¬ 
anism  in  Scotland,  and  without  the  deep-set  Erastian  pride  of 
the  Plantagenets  in  their  nature  to  stiffen  them  against  the 
Church  at  starting,  they  were  open  ground,  and  invited  culti¬ 
vation.  Laud  gave  it.  He  elicited  the  favourable  traits, 
fastened  their  predilections,  and  marked  out  their  line.  The 
great  monarchical  families  of  European  history  seem  to  have 
all  had  their  peculiar  stamp  of  character  upon  them  :  a  Plan- 
tagenet  is  great ;  a  Bourbon  is  magnificent ;  a  Romanoff  is  poli¬ 
tical  and  adventurous.  A  more  passive  character  and  gentler 
interest  attaches  to  the  name  of  Stewart;;  but  an  interest  it  is. 
With  all  the  faults  and  all  the  weaknesses  of  the  individuals, 
enough  remains  to  throw  a  grace  over  the  dynasty  and 
race.  From  the  Scotch  Mary  and  her  grandson  Charles,  the 
victims  of  a  cruel  English  policy,  to  the  very  last  of  the  exiles  ; 
history  sets  them  before  our  eyes  in  a  broken  and  scattered, 
but  still  fascinating  colour.  The  Stewart  power  ever  befriended 
the  Church ;  and  they  were  the  Church’s  sons  when  they 
might  have  been  her  foes  and  oppressors.  The  pride  which  is 
the  guilt  of  the  kings  of  the  earth  did  not  belong  to  their 
character;  their  Regale  was  a  religious  one;  the  haughty  world 
frowned  upon  such  half  kings,  such  children  in  policy,  such  weak 
infantine  Church  dupes.  Yet  the  secret  inward  Church  spell 
would  operate,  its  very  forebodings  fascinated  and  led  them  on  ; 
they  hovered  around  their  destiny  till  it  seized  them.  In  an 
evil  hour  they  left  the  very  communion  they  had  nurtured, 
condemned  themselves  to  melancholy  exile,  and  the  Church  of 
England  to  a  reaction  of  weakness  and  sterility.  They  shone 
like  an  autumnal  sun  upon  her,  and  were  born  for  the  elevation 
of  our  Church  and  for  her  depression. 


128 


Archbishop  Laud. 


Laud  now  divided  his  time  between  Oxford  and  the  Court, 
and  was  penetrating  into  the  upper  sphere,  while  he  kept  his 
position  in  the  lower.  His  progress  at  Court  was  slow,  tedious, 
and  trying ;  he  made  no  way  whatever  for  a  long  time.  Three 
years  had  passed  and  found  him  only  King's  chaplain  still. 
The  black  Oxford  cloud  had  followed  him,  and  the  pressure  of 
Abbot’s  archiepiscopate  kept  him  under,  and  would  not  let  him 
see  daylight.  At  the  end  of  three  years,  with  nothing  done 
and  nothing  promising,  he  made  up  his  mind  to  withdraw  from 
the  scene,  and  return  to  his  simple  Oxford  headship.  How¬ 
ever,  he  told  Bishop  Neil  of  his  intention  ;  Neil  remonstrated  ; 
he  stayed  on,  and  gave  the  experiment  another  trial. 

Three  or  four  years  cleared  the  prospect  a  little,  and  an 
opening  was  made  :  James  took  notice  of  him.  In  1616  he 
accompanied  James  into  Scotland.  He  stood  by  James’s  side, 
and  heard  pedantic  speeches  from  the  Scotch  Universities,  and 
listened  to  James’s  puns.  The  King  was  in  capital  humour, 
enjoyed  the  technicalities  and  pomps  of  a  progress,  made  jokes 
on  the  Scotch  professors’  names,  and  argued  points  of  ritual. 
Years  ago  Laud  had  seen  James  on  his  favourite  stage.  The 
King’s  manor  at  Woodstock  brought  him  into  the  University 
region  ;  he  “  graciously  received  the  Vice- Chancellor  of  Oxon., 
together  with  the  doctors,  proctors,  and  heads  of  houses,  at 
his  manor  of  Woodstock.”  The  invitation  was  returned,  and 
the  King  on  his  part  “  accepted  a  solemn  invitation  from  the 
University,  and  performed  in  all  manner  of  scholastic  exercises, 
divinity,  law,  physic,  and  philosophy  ;  in  all  of  which  he  showed 
himself  of  such  great  abilities,  that  he  might  have  governed  in 
those  chairs  as  well  as  all  or  any  of  his  three  professors.” 
Times  had  changed  certainly  on  a  more  recent  visit  of  royalty 
to  the  place  ;  and  George  iv.  did  not  adopt  his  erudite  pre¬ 
decessor’s  model ;  whether  frightened  by  a  more  formidable 
show  of  scholastic  criticism  and  power,  in  the  divinity  professors 
of  the  present  day  than  the  latter  had  to  encounter,  or  for 
any  other  reason,  we  cannot  say.  James’s  was  a  harmless  and 
simple  style  of  affectation  after  all :  it  showed  itself  frankly, 
and  had  no  concealments.  He  liked  theology,  and  he  liked 
mulled  wine :  he  liked  both  for  his  own  amusement  and  as 


Archbishop  Laud. 


129 


pleasing  cordials  and  recreations.  He  was  of  tire  nature  of  a 
puss-in-boots,  and  carried  a  flattering  consciousness  of  the 
regal  cothurnus  about  with  him.  The  grace  of  the  Stewart 
character  took  a  leap  from  the  mother  to  the  grandson,  and 
passed  over  the  personage  in  the  middle.  A  more  comfortable 
life  than  that  of  either  gave  him  the  balance  for  the  loss  in  a 
shape  which  he  particularly  appreciated ;  and  he  was  amply 
compensated  for  a  rather  ungainly  and  ridiculous  mediocrity  of 
character  by  not  having  to  fight,  and  not  being  beheaded.  On 
the  present  occasion  he  was  quite  himself,  and  Laud  had  the 
benefit  of  his  royal  self-complacency.  James,  with  the  usual 
awkwardness,  which  always  made  him  choose  the  most 
offensive  form  of  speech  for  a  suggestion,  told  the  Scotch 
divines  that  “  he  had  brought  some  English  theologians  to 
enlighten  their  minds.” 

Laud  wedged  his  passage  further  and  further  through 
the  dense  mass,  and  found  himself  at  last  approaching  some¬ 
thing  like  a  centre,  and  penetrating  within  the  inner  circle,  in 
which  stood  the  great  man  himself — the  wielder  of  Court  power, 
the  dispenser  of  Court  favours — Buckingham.  A  proximity 
once  begun  became  rapidly  closer,  till  the  two  fairly  met,  and 
Laud  and  Buckingham  made  a  coalition. 

The  connection  of  Laud  and  Buckingham  is  one  of  those 
odd  juxtapositions,  which  people  ordinarily  account  for  by 
supposing  an  inconsistency  in  one  or  both  of  the  parties  in  it. 
We  do  not  think  this  necessary,  at  the  same  time  fully 
recognising  its  striking,  pungent,  and  comic  grotesqueness. 
Laud  and  Buckingham,  the  grave  Oxford  scholar  and  the  light¬ 
hearted  “Favourite,” — the  very  plume  of  Court  chivalry,  and 
bright  flourish  of  silk  mantle  and  rapier  and  white  feather, 
dashing  manner,  frankness,  ease,  swordsmanship,  duelling,  and 
dancing ;  and  the  stiff-set  ecclesiastical  figure,  the  physiognomy 
in  the  square  cap,  side  by  side,  is  certainly  a  picture  !  Buck¬ 
ingham  is  an  odd  companion  and  intimate  for  Laud,  it  is  true ; 
but  then  it  is  also  true  that  men  will  form  strange  friendships 
when  they  have  a  public  object  in  view.  The  public  man, 
purely  political  or  ecclesiastical,  is  forced  upon  a  different 
class  of  connections  from  what  he  would  have  had  in  private 

M.E.-I.] 


I 


1 3° 


Archbishop  Laud. 


life  ;  his  very  vocation  brings  him  across  the  person,  whoever 
he  may  be,  who  is  the  key  to  certain  means  and  resources, 
the  medium  of  approach  to  the  particular  position  he  wants. 
He  finds  him  necessary ;  he  makes  himself  convenient.  The 
bargain  is  struck,  and  we  have  a  political  friendship  formed  ; 
so  far  a  political  one  only.  However,  once  brought  into  con¬ 
nection  with  him,  upon  whatever  ground,  the  man  is  seen,  the 
man  is  known  :  if  he  has  fine  qualities,  they  are  recognised ; 
and  the  mere  fact  of  his  company  places  him  in  a  favourable 
relation  to  you.  Much  intercourse  between  two  persons,  how¬ 
ever  it  may  have  originated,  if  it  only  as  a  matter  of  fact  takes 
place,  must  have  its  consequences  :  and  if  parties  do  not  get  to 
hate  each  other,  they  naturally  get  to  like  each  other.  Mutual 
convenience  produces  mutual  heart.  These  mixed  relations  are 
in  fact  the  commonest  ones  in  the  world,  and  persons  are  every 
day  forming  the  private  friendship  upon  the  public.  An 
ecclesiastical  object  brought  Laud  into  contact  with  Bucking¬ 
ham,  but  being  brought  into  contact  with  him,  he  saw,  knew, 
and  liked  him.  There  was  a  great  deal  to  like  in  Buckingham. 
Spoilt  child  of  a  Court  as  he  was,  his  mind  had  a  generosity, 
openness,  and  transparency  of  its  own.  Clarendon  mentions 
his  entire  “  want  of  dissimulation.” 

To  have  much  to  do  with  persons  of  wholly  different  mould 
from  yourself  is  no  enviable  situation.  However  Laud  may 
have  taken  to  the  work,  and  got  himself  to  like  men, — and 
Buckingham  he  really  was  fond  of, — the  friendship  was  a  crea¬ 
tion  of  his  own  out  of  incongruous  material,  and  was  a  work  of 
mental  art  and  labour.  Endurance,  vigilance,  and  self-com¬ 
mand  were  implied  in  it.  Charles,  Strafford,  and  others,  are 
not  to  be  named  with  Buckingham  ;  but  they  are  instances  of 
the  same  power  in  Laud  ;  of  wholly  differently  stamped  minds 
from  his  own,  which  one  after  another  he  got  hold  of.  An  ordi¬ 
nary  temper  does  not  like  the  exertion  :  it  throws  off  another  as 
soon  as  ever  a  symptom  of  incongeniality  arises,  and  will  not 
bear  the  burden  of  an  external  mind.  The  vicinity  of  difference 
is  a  yoke,  and  only  another  self  is  comfortable.  A  larger 
sympathy  is  more  under  discipline  and  command  ;  is  patient  of 
barriers,  and  allows  whole  tracts  of  difference  within  its  scope 


Archbishop  Laud. 


1 3 1 

and  domain.  It  sees  through  exteriors,  surmounts  obstacles, 
and  hears  the  presence  of  the  uncongenial  feature  for  the  sake 
of  the  congenial  one  by  its  side. 

It  would  be  injustice  to  Laud  and  Buckingham’s  friendship 
not  to  mention  one  point  in  it.  The  priest  and  the  politician 
were  joined  in  the  knot  which  bound  the  two ;  and  Laud  was 
Buckingham’s  confessor.  The  commotions  and  intrigues  of  the 
Court  arena  and  the  life  diplomatical,  which  bore  the  great 
noble  and  the  ecclesiastic  along  together,  covered  a  deeper 
relation.  A  politician  of  the  present  day  may  think  the  com¬ 
bination  a  grotesque  one,  but  it  never  seems  to  have  entered 
either  into  Laud’s  or  Buckingham’s  head  to  think  it  so.  The 
same  cabinet  walls  heard  them  scheme  and  heard  them  talk 
religion  ;  and  the  two  statesmen  dropped  from  the  political  atti¬ 
tude  without  effort,  whenever  they  chose  it,  into  that  of  the 
religious  pupil  and  teacher.  Laud,  at  the  proper  moment,  put 
off  the  politician  and  put  on  the  divine,  and  was  grave  and 
spiritual  with  the  gay  splendid  Duke.  “  Whitsunday,  June  9,” 
says  the  Diary,  “  the  Marquis  of  Buckingham  was  pleased  to 
enter  upon  a  nearer  respect  unto  me,  the  particulars  whereof 
are  not  for  paper.”  “June  15,  I  become  C.  to  my  Lord  of  Buck¬ 
ingham.”  “  Confessor,”  says  Heylin.  The  modern  biographer 
of  Laud  does  not  like  “  confessor,”  and  makes  C.  stand  for 
“  chaplain ;  ”  but  it  obviously  means  confessor :  the  whole 
context  interprets  it  so ;  and  Laud,  Bishop  of  Bath  and 
Wells,  as  he  was  then,  could  hardly  become  a  domestic  chaplain 
to  a  nobleman.  “  On  the  morrow  after,”  it  follows,  “  being 
Trinity  Sunday,  the  Marquis  having  thus  prepared  himself, 
received  the  Sacrament  at  Greenwich.”  In  the  midst  of  the 
turmoil  of  politics  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  Buckingham  on  a 
sick-bed,  and  Laud  by  his  side.  “  He  was  extreme  impatient 
of  his  fits  till  Laud  came  to  visit  him,  by  whom  he  was  so 
charmed  and  sweetened,  that  at  first  he  endured  his  fits  with 
patience,  and  by  that  patience  did  so  break  their  heats  and 
violence,  that  at  last  they  left  him.”  Laud  improved  the 
occasion,  and  made  Buckingham  take  in  a  considerable  share  of 
theology.  He  was  made  to  understand  distinctions — to  see 
the  doctrinal  differences  between  the  Puritans  and  the  Church. 


132 


A rchbishop  Laud. 


“  The  Duke  had  a  desire  to  learn  the  heads  of  doctrinal  Puritan¬ 
ism,  and  he  served  him  in  it.”  The  Treasury  was  desperately 
empty,  and  a  project  was  on  foot  to  alienate  the  lands  of  the 
Charterhouse  for  the  maintenance  of  the  army.  Laud  dis¬ 
suaded  Buckingham  from  it.  The  notices  in  the  Diary  let  us 
into  a  department  altogether  behind  the  scenes,  and  odd 
mysterious  fragments  come  across  us.  “  Jan.  11 . — My  Lord  of 
Buckingham  and  I  in  the  inner  chamber  at  York  House.  Quod 
est  Deus  Salvator  noster  Jesus  Christus ;  ”  a  Sunday-night  talk 
on  the  supernatural  world  :  “  The  discourse  which  my  Lord 
Duke  had  with  me  about  witches  and  astrologers.”  Bucking¬ 
ham  was  a  mixture.  The  man  of  gaiety  and  Court  license  had 
a  religious  element  in  his  character,  and  was  deeply  attached  to 
a  devout  mother.  The  Boman  Catholics  tried  to  turn  the 
family  stream  into  their  own  Church.  Laud  kept  the  Duchess 
back  a  long  time,  and  brought  her  back  once,  but  she  slipped 
his  hold  at  last.  The  Duke  was  near  following  his  mother. 
The  prayers  in  the  Breviate,  “pro  Duce  Buckinghamice  ”  show 
the  religious  interest  which  Laud  took  in  him.  He  seems  to 
have  had  a  pleasure  in  eliciting  what  religion  there  was  in  the 
naturally  generous  but  wild  soil,  to  have  wished  to  make  his 
fascinating  scholar  as  good  a  boy  as  might  be,  to  have  had  a 
quiet  power  over  him,  and  been  able  to  calm,  soothe,  and  attract 
the  wayward  mind  of  the  princely  child. 

The  alliance  of  Laud  and  Buckingham  once  struck  up, 
Laud  was  always  at  his  side,  was  his  adviser  and  assister ; 
helped  him  through  the  scrape,  supplied  his  place  by  the  royal 
ear  when  he  was  gone,  kept  up  his  influence,  and  prevented 
rivals  starting.  Ciphers  and  mysterious  signs  passed  between 
them,  and  an  invisible  cabinet  enclosed  the  pair.  Laud  did 
not  do  anything  by  halves,  and  once  a  politician,  he  threw 
himself  into  the  character.  He  entered  deep  into  Court 
struggles ;  into  diplomacy,  domestic  and  foreign ;  watched  Par¬ 
liament,  and  wTatched  the  King.  He  got  a  good  share  of  the 
Duke’s  odium ;  and  the  affair  of  the  Spanish  match  and  the 
expedition  of  Charles  and  Buckingham  into  Spain  brought 
popular  feeling  upon  him.  James’s  policy  then  was  to  please 
the  Pope,  who  was  to  grant  the  dispensation  for  the  match. 


Archbishop  Laud. 


x33 


The  English  recusants  were  consequently  let  off  their  fines, 
and  the  expressions  of  the  royal  controversialist  on  the  point  of 
the  Pope  being  Antichrist  were  explained — he  had  only  made 
the  assertion  argumentatively.  The  relief  and  the  explanation 
were  attributed  to  Laud,  and  the  Spanish  journey  was  reported 
to  be  a  stratagem  to  convert  the  Prince  to  Popery. 

The  Crown  was  in  perpetual  want  of  money,  and  a  war  or 
other  extraordinary  event  made  national  loans  necessary.  Laud, 
as  the  term  was,  “  tuned  the  pulpits,”  a  practice  of  Elizabethan 
origin,  and  the  clergy  received  their  instructions  to  lay  before 
their  congregations  the  hard  case  of  “  our  dear  uncle  the  King 
of  Denmark,  just  brought  into  great  straits  by  General  Tilly,” 
who  would  be  exceedingly  obliged  to  them  for  liberal  contri¬ 
butions  to  his  cause,  in  which  they  were  so  extremely  inter¬ 
ested.  The  German  Emperor  was  made  the  bugbear,  and  a 
break-up  of  the  balance  of  power,  and  a  German  march  over 
the  Continent,  were  predicted  to  the  auditors  if  his  present 
designs  on  Denmark  succeeded ;  “  for  if  the  Emperor  of  Austria 
once  get  Germany,  he  will  be  able,  though  he  had  no  gold  from 
India,  to  supply  the  necessity  of  those  wars,  and  to  hinder  all 
trade  and  traffic  of  the  greatest  staple  commodities  of  this 
kingdom — cloth  and  wool — and  so  make  them  of  little  or  no 
value.”  The  majority  of  auditors  would  probably  feel  their 
connection  with  Denmark  but  feebly,  but  the  last  appeal  would 
at  any  rate  tell  on  the  imagination. 

The  secret  ramifications- of  political  life  now  begin  to  spread, 
and  his  feelers  extend  over  the  ground,  touch  here  and  there, 
and  find  out  this  man  and  the  other.  Connections  widen 
underground,  and  a  mysterious  world  of  acquaintance  forms, 
and  we  explore  with  him  the  parts  behind  the  scenes  of  the 
political  stage.  Alphabetical  personages  appear  in  the  pages 
of  his  Diary,  E.  R,  and  C.  D.,  A.  H.,  and  S.  and  T.,  with  whom 
he  has  interviews,  private  engagements,  compacts,  pledges  given 
and  taken,  and  an  issue  awaited.  A  taste  for  the  Eleusinian 
chambers  and  hidden  strata  of  statesmanship  is  a  characteristic 
of  Laud,  and  his  course  to  the  last  is  perpetually  dipping 
under,  or  retiring  behind  a  screen,  or  sounding  some  depth,  or 
following  some  cavernous  winding.  He  and  the  unknown 


1.34 


Archbishop  Laud. 


X.  Y.  or  Z.  are  seen  in  an  obscure  corner  of  the  stage,  standing 
together  in  mysterious  attitude ;  and  what  they  are  talking 
about  nobody  knows,  but  it  seems  to  be  on  some  matter  of  deep 
interest  to  themselves,  and  signs  and  looks  pass,  and  their  faces 
have  a  serious  expression ;  and  they  seem  sometimes  as  if  they 
could  not  understand  one  another,  and  parted  in  displeasure. 

“  My  unfortunatenesses  with  T.,  with  S.  S.,  M.  S. “  Ill  hap 
with  E.;”  or,  “There  I  first  knew  what  E.  H.  thought  of  me.” 
The  balance  is  long  trembling  with  K.  B.  :  “  May  29. — My 
meeting  and  settling  upon  express  terms  with  K.  B.,  in  the 
gallery  at  Greenwich,  in  which  business  God  bless  me  :”  “  Jan.  1. 
— My  being  with  K.  B.  this  day,  in  the  afternoon,  troubled  me 
much.  God  send  me  a  good  issue  out  of  it.”  There  is  a 
change,  and  “  K.  B.  and  I  came  unexpectedly  to  a  clearer 
declaration  of  ourselves,  which  God  bless  ;  ”  and  then  a  relapse  : 
“  K.  B.  and  I  meet — the  lowest  ebb  that  ever  I  saw.  I  go 
away  much  troubled.”  Another  meeting,  and  “All  settled  well 
again ;  ”  another,  and  “  An  absolute  settlement  between  me 
and  K.  B.”  He  notes  down  when  he  first  saw  a  man,  and 
when  he  begins  to  know  him,  and  when  he  knows  him  better  ; 
and  the  mystic  scale  of  sympathy  has  every  line  marked.  These 
encounters  spring  up  everywhere,  and  he  is  in  contact  with  half 
the  alphabet  at  once,  with  the  ubiquity  of  a  ghost — “  hie  et 
ubique ,”  would  Hamlet  have  said,  “  a  worthy  pioneer — rest, 
rest,  perturbed  spirit.”  He  lives  in  a  prolific  world  of  occult 
life,  and  individual  influences  and  conjunctions ;  and  a  diplo¬ 
matic  astrology  spreads  its  filmy  web  over  the  scene. 

Laud  stood  fast  by  Buckingham  in  his  Parliamentary 
battles,  made  him  an  able  adviser,  and,  it  is  said,  wrote  his 
speeches.  In  the  Parliament  of  1626,  both  Houses,  Commons 
and  Lords,  were  combined  against  him  :  the  Earl  of  Bristol 
attacked  him  in  the  Upper  House,  the  whole  regiment  of 
lawyers  in  the  Lower.  “  Glanville,  Herbert,  Selden,  Pym, 
Wansford,  and  Sherland  managed  the  case  :  the  prologue  was 
made  by  Sir  Dudley  Digges,  the  epilogue  by  Sir  John  Eliot.” 
He  was  accused  of  engrossing  offices,  buying  the  places  of 
Lord  Admiral  and  Lord  Warden  of  the  Cinque  Ports,  and  of 
not  guarding  the  seas  when  he  had  got  them  ;  of  “  staying  the 


Archbishop  Laud. 


*35 


St.  Peter  of  Newhaven,  and  the  East  India  fleet,  and  lending 
the  Vantguard  to  the  French  at  the  siege  of  Eochelle ;  of 
selling  honours  and  offices,  procuring  honours  to  his  kinsfolk  ; 
of  diminishing  the  revenues  of  the  Crown ;  and,  lastly,  ap¬ 
plying  physic  to  King  James  in  the  time  of  his  sickness.” 
Buckingham’s  answer  to  this  curious  Blouse  of  Commons 
mixture  of  charges  was  cautious,  temperate,  and  humble ; 
strong  in  denying  all  particular  facts,  but  balancing  the  denial 
with  general  professions  of  humility,  and  acknowledgments  of 
deficiency.  “  He  acknowledged  how  easy  a  thing  it  was  to  him 
in  his  younger  years,  and  inexperienced,  to  fall  into  thousands 
of  errors.  But  still  he  hoped  the  fear  of  God,  his  sincerity  in 
the  true  religion  established  in  the  Church  of  England  (though 
accompanied  with  many  weaknesses  and  imperfections,  which 
he  is  not  ashamed  humbly  and  heartily  to  confess),  his  care¬ 
fulness  not  willingly  to  offend  so  good  and  gracious  a  master, 
and  his  love  and  duty  to  his  country,  had  restrained  and  pre¬ 
served  him  from  running  into  any  heinous  misdemeanours  and 
crimes.  Eor  his  own  part,  he  both  hoped,  and  would  daily 
pray,  that  for  the  future  he  might  so  watch  over  all  his 
actions,  both  public  and  private,  as  not  to  give  cause  of  just 
offence  to  any  person.”  Buckingham’s  new  appearance  in  the 
penitential  character  astonished  people  not  a  little  ;  the  line  of 
defence  had  not  the  look  of  being  wholly  a  self-suggested  one, 
and  the  sagacious  immediately  detected  Laud’s  hand  under¬ 
neath.  The  speech,  however,  answered  its  purpose,  and  gained 
and  softened  many.  “  The  answer  of  the  Duke,”  says  a  con¬ 
temporary,  “  was  so  inlaid  with  modesty  and  humility,  that  it 
became  a  new  grievance  to  his  adversaries,  and  was  like  to 
have  a  powerful  influence  toward  the  conversion  of  many  who 
expected  a  defence  of  another  and  more  disdainful  spirit.” 

Two  envious  eyes,  meantime,  were  fixed  on  the  alliance  ; 
and  Laud,  cabineted  with  Buckingham,  was  an  intolerable 
eyesore  to  the  old  Oxford  enemy,  Abbot,  and  the  Lord  Keeper 
Williams.  “  There  he  sits,”  says  Abbot,  “  privately  whole  hours 
with  Buckingham,  feeding  his  humours  with  malice  and  spite.” 
Abbot  was  the  disgusted  Puritan.  Williams,  calm  and  serpen¬ 
tine,  writhed  under  the  feelings  of  a  supplanted  rival. 


Archbishop  Laud. 


136 

Williams  had  long  felt  Laud  in  his  way ;  on  one  occasion 
especially,  when  Abbot’s  unfortunate  shot  in  Lord  Zouch’s 
park  at  Bramsall  seemed  to  open  a  road  to  the  Primacy. 
Abbot  became  by  that  act  “  a  man  of  blood,”  and  fell  under 
canonical  disabilities.  James,  who  enjoyed  a  theme  of 
canonical  disputation,  instituted  with  promptness  a  Commis¬ 
sion,  composed  of  bishops,  judges,  and  doctors  of  laws,  to  sit 
on  the  offender  ;  and  while  the  unfortunate  criminal  retired 
to  melancholy  solitude  in  his  native  town,  Guildford,  a  variety 
of  opinions  were  given.  Sir  Edward  Coke  looked  on  the 
matter  with  a  lawyer’s  eye.  On  the  question  being  pro¬ 
pounded,  “  Whether  a  bishop  might  lawfully  hunt  in  his 
own,  or  in  any  other  park  ?  ”  (in  which  point  lay  the  greatest 
pinch  of  the  present  difficulty),  that  most  profound  lawyer 
returned  this  answer  thereunto,  viz.  :  “  That  by  the  law  a 
bishop  at  his  death  was  to  leave  his  pack  of  dogs  (by  the 
French  called  Morte  cle  chiens  in  some  old  records)  to  be  dis¬ 
posed  of  by  the  King  at  his  will  and  pleasure.  And  if  the 
King  was  to  have  the  dogs  when  the  bishop  died,  there  was 
no  question  to  be  made,  but  that  the  bishop  might  make  use 
of  them  when  he  was  alive.”  Williams  most  characteristically 
wished  to  be  lenient,  but  also  wished  for  the  Primacy,  to  which 
he  looked  forward  on  the  first  vacancy  ;  and  his  letter  was  a 
model  of  significant  ambiguity  :  “  I  wish  with  all  my  heart 
his  Majesty  would  be  as  merciful  as  ever  he  was  in  his  life  ; 
but  yet  I  hold  it  my  duty  to  let  his  Majesty  know,  that  his 
Majesty  is  fallen  upon  a  matter  of  great  advice  and  delibera¬ 
tion.  To  add  affliction  unto  the  afflicted  is  against  the  King’s 
nature  :  to  leave  virum  sanguineum ,  a  man  of  blood,  primate 
and  patriarch  of  all  his  churches,  is  a  thing  that  sounds  very 
harsh  in  the  old  councils  and  canons  of  the  Church.  The 
Papists  will  not  spare  to  descant  upon  the  one  and  the  other. 
I  leave  the  knot  for  his  Majesty’s  deep  wisdom  to  advise  and 
resolve  upon.”  Laud  and  Bishop  Andrewes  thought  Williams 
much  the  more  formidable  person  of  the  two,  and  kept  Abbot 
in  his  see  to  prevent  Williams  getting  it. 

Cool  and  keen,  absolutely  unprincipled,  and  as  slippery  as 
an  eel,  Laud  had  a  sort  of  dread  of  Williams,  as  of  some  subtle, 


Archbishop  Laud . 


J37 


malicious  animal.  He  did  not  show  it ;  but  in  his  Diary 
Williams’s  evil  eye  seems  to  pursue  him.  “  Oct.  3,  Friday. — 
I  was  with  my  Lord  Keeper ;  he  was  very  jealous  of  L.  B.’s 
favour.”  “Dec.  14. — Tuesday  night  I  did  dream  that  the  Lord 
Keeper  was  dead  ;  that  I  passed  by  one  of  his  men  that  was 
about  a  monument  for  him.  This  dream  did  trouble  me.” 
“  Dec.  27,  St.  John’s  Day. — I  was  with  my  Lord  of  Buckingham. 
I  found  that  all  went  not  right  with  my  Lord  Keeper.”  “  Jan. 
25. — It  was  Sunday.  I  was  alone,  and  languishing  with  I 
know  not  what  sadness.  I  was  much  concerned  with  the  envy 
and  undeserved  hatred  borne  to  me  by  the  Lord  Keeper.  I 
took  into  my  hands  the  Greek  Testament,  that  I  might  read 
the  portion  of  the  day.  I  lighted  upon  the  thirteenth  chapter 
to  the  Hebrews,  wherein  that  of  David,  Psalm  lvi.,  occurred  to 
me,  then  grieving  and  fearing  :  The  Lord  is  may  helper ;  I  will 
not  fear  what  man  can  do  unto  me.  I  thought  an  example 
was  set  to  me,  and  who  is  not  safe  under  that  shield  ?  Pro¬ 
tect  me,  0  Lord  my  God  !  ”  “  Feb.  18,  Wednesday. — My  Lord  of 
Buckingham  told  me  of  the  reconciliation  and  submission  of 
my  Lord  Keeper,  and  that  it  was  confessed  unto  him  his  favour 
to  me  was  the  chief  cause.  Invidia  quo  tendisl  etc.  At  ille 
de  novo  foedus  pepigit.”  Williams  now  lay  in  wait,  and  Laud 
had  to  watch  him  narrowly.  He  made  some  attempts  at 
undermining  Buckingham,  during  the  Spanish  journey,  which 
were  failures  :  Laud,  says  Heylin,  “  was  not  asleep.”  He  was 
nearer  success  on  the  next  occasion.  The  Parliament  of  1625 
wanted  to  make  an  example  of  some  great  official — the 
fashionable  Parliamentary  game  then  :  Cranfield  had  been 
tried  the  Parliament  before ;  Bacon,  the  one  before  that. 
Williams  now  seemed  a  proper  person  to  take  in  hand :  he 
emulated  Wolsey  almost  as  a  pluralist,  being  Lord  Keeper, 
Bishop  of  Lincoln,  and  Dean  of  Westminster,  besides  livings 
and  prebendal  stalls.  He  managed  most  artfully  to  convert  his 
own  danger  into  a  gratification  of  his  spleen.  Parliament  were 
more  particular  about  their  sport  than  about  the  object  of  it :  he 
recommended  them  Buckingham.  The  humility  of  the  ground 
assigned  was  impressive  :  the  great  Duke  “  was  a  more  noble 
prey,  and  fitter  for  such  mighty  hunters  than  a  silly  priest.”  Par- 


Archbishop  Laud . 


138 

liament  took  tlie  hint,  and  “  the  great  game  was  no  sooner 
started,  hut  they  followed  it  with  such  an  outcry,  that  the  noise 
thereof  came  presently  to  his  Majesty’s  ears.”  Indeed,  they 
were  only  torn  from  their  prey  by  a  dissolution. 

Abbot  meantime  was  surly  and  angry,  called  names,  op¬ 
posed  for  opposition  s  sake,  and  had  his  revenge  as  long  as  he 
could  by  keeping  Laud  out  of  the  High  Commission.  The 
royal  subsidies  fell  with  disproportionate  weight  on  the  poorer 
clergy,  and  Laud  had  a  scheme  of  relieving  them  ;  and  Buck¬ 
ingham,  as  the  representative  of  the  State,  agreed  to  it.  The 
plan  aimed  at  nothing  more  than  this,  and  was  no  party  effort 
whatever ;  even  Williams  concurring  in  it.  Laud  took  it  to 
Abbot  for  his  approval,  and  was  roughly  asked,  “  What  he  had 
to  do  to  make  any  suit  for  the  Church  ?  that  never  any  bishop 
attempted  the  like  before,  and  that  nobody  would  have  done  it 
but  himself ;  that  he  had  given  the  Church  such  a  wound  in 
speaking  to  any  Lord  of  the  laity  about  it,  as  he  would  never 
make  whole  again.”  He  replied,  very  quietly,  “  that  he 
thought  he  had  done  a  very  good  office  for  the  Church,  and 
so  did  his  betters  too  :  that  if  his  Grace  thought  otherwise  he 
was  sorry  he  had  offended ;  but  that  he  hoped  he  had  done  it 
out  of  a  good  mind,  and  for  the  support  of  many  poor  vicars 
abroad  in  the  country ;  and,  therefore,  that  his  error  might  be 
pardonable,  if  it  were  an  error.”  Abbot  played  the  churl,  and 
Laud’s  disciplined  courtesy  and  humility  always  put  him  in 
the  wrong,  and  unseated  him. 

Laud’s  line  towards  opponents  was  the  quiet  effective  one ; 
not  hurried  or  importunate,  catching  at  advantages,  leaping  to 
success.  At  Oxford  and  at  Court  the  same,  one  strong  but 
quiet  course  ;  temper,  vigilance,  and  perseverance,  put  aside 
obstacles,  and  cleared  the  road  to  power.  Adversaries  found 
themselves  gradually  displaced  without  the  violence  of  an 
assault,  and  a  moving  influence  insensibly  elbowed  and  sidled 
them  out  of  the  field.  The  union  of  Buckingham  and  Laud 
was  a  nucleus  of  strength,  creating  a  widening  circle  and 
atmosphere  of  its  own  around  it.  With  his  hold  upon  the 
centre,  he  was  necessarily  from  his  position  the  rising  man. 
Williams  bit  at  his  heels,  lay  in  ambuscade,  crouched,  and 


Archbishop  Laud. 


139 


made  his  spring ;  he  was  suffered  to  go  on  opposing,  impeding, 
and  undermining,  till  his  efforts  became  open,  and  he  had 
fairly  revealed  himself :  a  disgrace  at  Court  then  ensued,  and 
he  retired  to  his  diocese.  Abbot  growled  morosely  from  his 
palace  at  Lambeth  at  the  growing  power,  but  he  could  only 
show  his  temper,  and  could  do  nothing.  A  cloud  was  upon 
him,  and  his  name  was  tarnished.  He  retired  savagely  before 
the  advancing  power,  scowling  and  muttering  as  he  went ;  shut 
himself  up  in  his  palace  with  Calvinist  chaplains,  and  secre¬ 
taries,  and  gathered  the  disaffected  around  him.  Midnight 
conclaves  and  a  sepulchral  focus  and  glare  of  Calvinism  lit  up 
the  gloomy  interior  of  Lambeth.  “  Towards  his  death,”  says 
Heylin,  “  he  was  not  only  discontented  himself,  but  his  house 
was  the  rendezvous  of  all  the  malcontents  in  Church  and  State ;  ” 
adding,  “  that  he  turned  midnight  into  noonday  by  constant 
keeping  of  candles  lighted  in  his  chamber  and  study ;  as  also 
that  such  visitants  as  repaired  unto  him  called  themselves 
Nicodemites,  because  of  their  secret  coming  to  him  by  night.” 
An  uncomfortable  inauspicious  shade  covers  the  character  of 
the  puritanical  Archbishop,  and  he  moves  off  the  scene  like 
a  magician  to  his  fastness,  or  a  wild  animal  to  its  den.  The 
Keeper  s  ghost  gibbered  through  his  silent  halls.  The  dark 
vapour  gathered  itself  up  and  withdrew  reluctantly  from  the 
uncongenial  sky.  His  death  removed  an  evil  eye  from  the 
scene,  and  Laud  saw  the  career  of  one  of  his  great  opponents 
out ;  but  he  had  not  seen  the  last  of  Williams. 

Meantime  Laud  had  been  the  ecclesiastic,  had  risen  to  one 
post  after  another,  the  Deanery  of  Gloucester,  the  Bishopric 
of  St.  David’s,  Bath  and  Wells,  and  London,  successively ;  and 
been  active  in  Church  restorations,  and  in  the  fiscal  and  other 
external  departments  of  Church  administration.  As  Dean  of 
Gloucester  he  gave  a  specimen  of  what  he  wanted  to  do  in 
Church  external  worship,  and  mortally  offended  the  Bishop, 
Dr.  Miles  Smith,  the  great  Hebrician,  and  one  of  the  Bible 
translators,  who  “  protested  unto  the  Dean  and  some  of  the 
prebends,  that  if  such  innovations  were  brought  into  that 
cathedral,  he  would  never  come  more  within  those  walls ; 
which  promise  or  protestation  he  is  said  to  have  made  good,  and 


140 


Archbishop  Laud. 


not  to  have  come  within  that  church  to  his  dying  day.”  The 
Bishop  was  certainly  “a  man  of  great  pertinacity”  if  he  kept  his 
word — “the  alteration  being  made  in  the  decline  of  the  year  1616, 
his  palace  standing  near  the  walls  of  that  cathedral,  and  he  not 
dying  till  the  year  1624,  which  was  eight  years  after.” 

His  episcopal  journeys  in  his  Welsh  diocese  do  not  appear 
to  have  had  the  advantage  of  the  comfortable  smoothness  of 
modern  roads.  “  August  24,  Wednesday. — The  festival  of 
St.  Bartholomew.  I  came  safely  (thanks  he  to  God)  to  my 
own  house  at  Aberguille,  although  my  coach  had  been  twice 
that  day  overturned  between  Abermarkes  and  my  house.  The 
first  time  I  was  in  it,  but  the  second  time  it  was  empty.”  His 
new  chapel  at  Abergwilly  comes  in,  in  the  Diary.  His  active 
ecclesiastical  eye,  meantime,  was  carried  up  and  down,  and 
everywhere  over  the  kingdom  ;  and  from  the  public  centre 
where  he  lived,  he  suggested  plans  of  church  improvements, 
and  threw  out  hints,  acted  much  in  the  capacity  of  Archbishop, 
in  Abbot’s  retirement,  and  was,  in  fact,  virtual  Archbishop 
before  he  actually  succeeded  to  the  place. 

Laud  was  in  a  position  now  to  rise  to  the  top,  at  the  first 
regular  opening,  and  the  head  which  had  long  guided  in  the 
background  only  waited  for  the  call  of  circumstances  to  place 
it  in  the  front.  A  melancholy  opening  arrived  :  the  Duke  of 
Buckingham’s  assassination  at  Portsmouth  made  a  successor 
necessary ;  and  Laud  was  called  to  the  head  of  affairs,  and 
became  the  chief  adviser  of  royalty,  or,  in  the  language  of  the 
present  day,  Prime  Minister.  The  metropolitan  throne  became 
vacant  by  Abbot’s  death.  Laud  succeeded,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  and  the  salutation  of  “  My  Lord’s  Grace  of  Canterbury” 
was  his  next  greeting  from  the  royal  lips.  Minor  honours 
flowed  in  thick.  The  Chancellorship  of  Oxford  had  fallen 
vacant :  Laud  succeeded,  as  a  matter  of  course  ;  circumstances 
pointed  him  out.  The  Chancellorship  of  Dublin  fell  vacant  : 
Laud  succeeded  ;  circumstances  pointed  him  out.  Circum¬ 
stances  pointed  him  out  for  posts  of  power  and  influence  as 
soon  as  they  fell  in.  He  had  made  himself  necessary,  and 
things  could  not  go  on  without  him.  The  official  development 
was  the  natural  result  of  what  he  had  gone  through  ;  the 


Archbishop  Laud. 


14* 


evolution  of  the  bud,  the  necessary  expansion  of  the  force  and 
spring  that  had  been  collecting.  Laud  began  to  smile  at  his 
own  official  ubiquity,  and  only  reluctantly  yielded  to  Straf¬ 
ford’s  urgency  in  accepting  the  last  post.  “  I  think  you  have 
a  plot  to  see,”  he  writes,  “  whether  I  will  be  Universalis  Epi- 
scopus ,'  that  you  and  your  brethren  may  take  occasion  to  call  me 
Antichrist.”  He  is  amused  with  Strafford’s  assuming  stiffness 
to  him,  and  treating  him  as  a  great  man.  “  So  you  are  not 
well  enough  acquainted  with  Lambeth,”  he  writes.  Strafford 
on  his  elevation,  like  a  true  gentleman,  refrained  from  the 
ordinary  freedom  and  humour  with  which  he  corresponded 
with  Laud,  and  waited  to  be  invited  before  he  resumed  it. 
Laud  rallies  him  on  the  subject,  “You  are  afraid  that  some 
sour  ghost  walks  there — you  have  not  given  me  one  word  of 
your  wonted  recreation.” 

Laud  now  had  to  act  the  minister,  to  entertain  kings  and 
nobles,  and  gather  a  Court  scene  about  him.  The  stream  of 
public  visitors  poured  in  and  out  of  his  doors — 

“  foribus  domus  alta  superbis 
Mane  salutantum  totis  vomit  aedibus  undam.” 

The  levee  and  the  interview,  the  arrival  of  messengers  and 
the  announcements  of  important  news,  foreign  and  domestic, 
men-at-arms  and  horsemen,  enlivened  and  disturbed  the  inte¬ 
rior  of  Lambeth.  He  had  to  wink  at  some  lighter  departments 
of  Court  life.  He  lived  in  a  Court  of  masques  and  theatricals 
and  gay  formalities ;  they  were  the  order  of  the  day,  and  had 
succeeded  to  the  tournament  and  field  of  arms.  Sir  Philip 
Sidney’s  Arcadia  and  Milton’s  Comus,  poetry  and  sentiment¬ 
ality,  sense  and  nonsense,  assumed  the  masquerading  form;  and 
eclogues  and  bucolics  were  the  vents  of  courtly  humour  and 
taste ;  princesses  figured  as  shepherdesses,  and  dukes  and 
barons  as  herdsmen.  Laud  was  supposed  especially  to  en¬ 
courage  these  frivolities  by  his  Puritan  assailants,  and  called 
sharply  to  account  for  it.  The  “  professors  ”  throughout  the 
country  set  upon  him,  and  reprimanded  him  for  carnality 
of  mind  and  love  of  the  world.  Prynne’s  Histrio-Mastix  came 
out,  and  a  most  furious  piece  of  vituperation  indeed  it  was, 
dragging  King  and  Court,  the  Queen  and  her  ladies  of  honour, 


142 


Archbishop  Laud. 


before  the  bar  as  shocking  and  notorious  profligates.  The  four 
Inns  of  court  took  the  matter  up,  and  determined  to  show  that 
Prynne  did  not  represent  them  on  this  point.  “  The  gentlemen 
of  the  four  societies  presented  their  Majesties  with  a  pompous 
and  magnificent  masque,  to  let  them  see  that  Prynne’ s  leaven 
had  not  soured  them  all,  and  that  they  were  not  poisoned  with 
the  same  infection.”  The  exhibition  “  gave  such  contentment 
to  his  sacred  Majesty  that  he  desired  them  to  make  a  repre¬ 
sentation  of  it  to  the  city  of  London.”  The  masque  accord¬ 
ingly  was  repeated,  “  to  the  delight  of  the  people,”  and  the 
principle  of  masques  was  triumphantly  vindicated,  and  carried 
public  opinion  with  it.  Laud  stood  up  for  them  on  a  utilitarian 
view.  He  had  been  used  to  them,  he  said,  at  St.  John’s,  and 
could  assert  that  the  dramatic  exercises  were  of  use  to  the 
young  men,  strengthened  the  memory,  “  trained  them  in  the 
art  of  speaking,  and  taught  them  confidence.” 

As  Chancellor  of  Oxford,  an  especial  act  of  magnificence 
devolved  upon  him.  In  1636  he  had  to  go  down  to  Oxford 
with  his  retinue  of  fifty  horse,  and  entertain  the  King,  Queen, 
and  Court,  in  his  academical  domain,  which  he  did  with  a 
sumptuousness  and  splendour  that  made  a  sensation.  Heylin’s 
description  is  written  with  goilt : — 

“  He  invited  the  King  and  the  Queen,  the  Prince  Elector 
and  his  brother,  to  an  academical  entertainment  on  the  29th  of 
August,  being  the  anniversary  day  on  which  the  Presidentship 
of  St.  John’s  College  was  adjudged  to  him  by  King  James. 
The  time  being  come  and  the  University  put  in  a  posture  for 
that  royal  visit,  their  Majesties  were  first  received  with  an 
eloquent  speech,  as  they  passed  by  the  House,  being  directly  in 
their  way  from  Woodstock  to  Christ  Church,  not  without  great 
honour  to  the  college  that  the  Lord  Archbishop,  the  Lord 
Treasurer,  the  Chancellor,  the  Vice-Chancellor,  and  one  of  the 
Proctors  should  be  at  that  time  of  the  same  foundation.  At 
Christ  Church  his  Majesty  was  entertained  with  another  oration 
by  Strode,  the  University  orator,  the  University  presenting  his 
Majesty  with  a  fair  and  costly  pair  of  gloves  (as  their  custom 
was),  the  Queen  with  a  fair  English  Bible,  the  Prince  Elector 
with  Hooker’s  books  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  his  brother  Eupert 


Archbishop  Laud. 


H3 


with  Caesar’s  Commentaries  in  English,  illustrated  by  the 
learned  explanations  and  discourses  of  Sir  Clement  Edmonds. 
His  Majesty  was  lodged  in  Christ  Church  in  the  great  hall 
(one  of  the  goodliest  in  the  world).  He  was  entertained, 
together  with  the  Queen,  the  two  Princes,  and  the  rest  of  the 
Court,  with  an  English  comedy,  hut  such  as  had  more  of  the 
philosopher  than  the  poet  in  it,  called  the  ‘  Passions  Calmed/ 
or  the  ‘  Settling  of  the  Floating  Islands/  On  the  morrow 
morning,  being  Tuesday,  he  began  with  a  sermon,  preached 
before  him  in  that  cathedral  from  these  words  of  St.  Luke — 
‘Blessed  is  the  king  that  cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord.’” 
[Whoever  the  preacher  was  we  do  not  exactly  commend  his 
text.  These  texts  were  too  much  the  fashion  then.]  “  The 
sermon  being  ended,  the  Archbishop  as  Chancellor  of  the  Uni¬ 
versity  calls  a  convocation,  in  which  he  admits  the  Prince 
Elector,  his  brother  Prince  Eupert,  and  many  of  the  chiefs  of 
the  nobility,  to  the  degree  of  Master  of  Arts,  and  that  being 
done,  attends  the  King  and  Queen  to  St.  John’s  College,  where 
in  the  new  gallery  of  his  own  building  he  entertains  the  King 
and  Queen,  the  two  Princes,  with  all  the  lords  and  ladies  of 
the  Court,  at  a  stately  and  magnificent  dinner,  the  King  and 
Queen  sitting  at  one  table  at  the  north  end  of  the  room,  the 
two  Princes,  with  the  lords  and  ladies,  at  a  long  table,  reaching 
almost  from  one  end  to  the  other,  at  which  all  the  gallantry 
and  beauty  of  the  kingdom  seemed  to  meet.  After  dinner,  he 
entertained  his  principal  guests  with  a  pleasant  comedy,  pre¬ 
sented  in  the  public  hall,  and  that  being  done,  attends  them 
back  again  to  Christ  Church,  where  thev  were  feasted  after 
supper  with  another  comedy  called  the  ‘Boyal  Slave/  the 
interludes  represented  with  as  much  variety  of  scenes  and 
motions  as  the  great  wit  of  Inigo  Jones  (surveyor-general  of 
his  Majesty’s  works,  and  excellently  well  skilled  in  setting  out 
a  court  masque  to  the  best  advantage)  could  extend  unto.  It 
was  the  day  of  St.  Felix  (as  himself  observeth),  and  all  things 
went  happily.  On  Wednesday,  the  next  morning,  the  Court 
removed,  his  Majesty  going  that  same  night  to  Winchester,  and 
the  Archbishop  the  same  day  entertaining  all  the  heads  of 
houses  at  a  solemn  feast,  order  being  given  at  his  departure 


144 


A  rch  b ishop  L  ecu d. 


that  the  three  comedies  should  be  acted  again,  for  the  content 
and  satisfaction  of  the  University.” 

The  affair  was  successful.  Laud  was  a  good  manager,  inter¬ 
nally  grumbling,  however,  at  the  great  bore  and  trouble  it  was, 
and  truly  happy  when  it  was  over — well  over.  “  I  will  not 
detain  you,”  writes  Strafford  at  the  time,  “  as  you  are  busied 
with  small  matters  at  Oxford.”  “  ’Tis  most  true,”  replies  Laud, 
with  the  feeling  of  a  recent  experience,  “  the  matters  are  small 
in  themselves,  but  to  me  they  have  been  great.  I  am  most 
heartily  glad  they  are  over.” 

But  though  masques  and  entertainments  were  not  exactly  in 
Laud’s  line,  he  had,  as  a  genuine  patron  of  learning  and  litera¬ 
ture,  a  common  ground  with  a  well-informed  Court  and  an 
accomplished  and  literary  monarch.  The  Stewart  Court  was 
clever  and  intellectual.  Charles  was  a  connoisseur  in  art  and 
a  scientific  man,  liked  chemistry,  had  his  laboratory,  and  experi¬ 
mentalised.  The  gallery  at  Whitehall  bade  fair  to  be  the  first 
in  Europe.  The  King  was  himself  an  artist,  and  handled  the 
brush,  and  his  artistical  friendship  with  Bubens  and  Yandyck 
spread  an  atmosphere  of  taste  around  it.  The  Court  was  the 
sphere  of  natural  philosophy,  elegance,  literature,  and  art. 
Laud  was  no  judge  of  pictures,  like  his  friend  Strafford  or 
Charles,  but  he  had  thoroughly  imbibed  the  literary  tone  of  the 
day  in  his  own  line.  He  found  out  men  of  learning,  encouraged 
the  growth  of  recondite  information,  collected  manuscripts  and 
coins,  sent  out  Pocock  to  the  East.  He  enriched  the  library 
at  Oxford  with  Hebrew,  Arabian,  Persian,  Turkish,  Bussian, 
Armenian,  Chinese,  Greek,  Italian,  French,  Latin,  and  Old 
English  manuscripts.  He  endowed  a  professorship  of  Arabic, 
and  annexed  a  canonry  to  the  professorship  of  Hebrew,  and  an¬ 
other  canonry  to  the  public  oratorship,  as  a  stimulus  to  the 
art  of  rhetoric.  He  procured  for  the  Universities  the  privilege 
of  printing  Bibles,  which  had  hitherto  been  engrossed  by 
the  King’s  stationers.  He  set  the  Oxford  press  going  on  a 
more  systematic  plan,  and  set  up  a  Greek  press  in  London. 
His  idea  of  a  University  was  an  enlarged  one,  a  place  of  generale 
studium,  a  general  field  of  learning  and  science  ;  and  his  mind 
went  upon  the  large  basis  of  encouraging  and  appreciating  all 


Archbishop  Land. 


145 


departments  and  all  sorts  of  men,  even  where  he  had  no 
acquaintance  of  his  own  with  the  subject. 

Laud’s  Court  line,  indeed,  and  liberal  view  of  society  occa¬ 
sionally  brings  men  to  Lambeth  that  make  us  rather  stare. 
Court  wits  of  a  brilliant,  hut  rather  lax,  stamp  found  their  way 
there,  and  Lord  Conway  seems  to  have  had  a  particular  'penchant 
for  the  Archbishop.  The  mixed  external  connection  with  men 
of  the  world  was  carried  on  a  large  scale,  and  he  was  ready  for 
anybody  that  came.  And  a  great  many  did  come,  and  Court 
jokers  carried  themselves  and  their  jokes  to  Lambeth,  and 
jostled  with  the  men  of  business  and  secretaries.  All  made  a 
whole  together,  and  went  into  his  reservoir. 

An  esoteric  life  accompanied  the  public  one  in  Laud.  It  is 
the  peculiar  calling  of  some  devotional  minds  to  be  able  to 
throw  themselves  into  the  character  of  the  able  man  of  the 
world,  as  a  distinct  phase  of  mind  which  does  not  affect  its 
real  internal  state.  The  medieval  prelates  were  politicians 
because  they  were  Churchmen,  and  the  ascent  to  power  and  the 
atmosphere  of  a  Court  did  not  interfere  with  true  sacerdotal 
sanctity.  Laud’s  devotional  character  was  of  the  peculiarly 
ecclesiastical  mould — formal  and  systematic,  simple  and 
penitential.  The  Bible  in  his  study,  with  the  five  wounds  of 
Christ  upon  the  binding,  the  gift  of  a  religious  lady,  which 
was  brought  up  against  him  at  his  trial ;  his  feeling  for 
the  crucifix ;  his  chapels,  oratories,  consecration  of  churches 
and  altars,  sacramental  chalices ;  his  bowings,  prostrations 
before  the  altar ;  his  constant  references  to  saints’  days ; 
his  almsgiving,  fasting,  canonical  hours  of  devotion ;  his 
prejudice  for  clerical  celibacy — show  that  peculiar  religious 
shape  of  mind.  “  Seven  times  a  day  do  I  praise  Thee,  be¬ 
cause  of  Thy  righteous  judgments.”  The  seven  hours  of  the 
Church  were  his  hours  of  prayer,  and  gave  constantly  recurring 
short  respites  and  pauses  to  his  life  of  intense  activity.  His 
first  act  as  a  parish  priest  was  to  apportion  an  annual  allowance 
from  the  living  to  twelve  poor  men.  The  poor  of  Beading  were 
especially  in  his  thoughts.  “  Jan.  1,”  we  read  in  the  Diary, 
“  The  way  to  do  the  town  of  Beading  good  for  their  poor,  which 
may  be  compassed  by  God’s  blessing  upon  me,  though  my 

M.E.-I.]  K 


146 


Archbishop  Laud. 


wealth  be  small,  and  I  hope  God  will  bless  me  in  it,  because  it 
was  His  own  motion  in  me  ;  for  this  way  never  came  into  my 
thoughts  (though  I  had  much  beaten  them  about)  till  this  night 
as  I  was  at  my  prayers.  Amen,  Lord.”  The  poor  at  Lambeth 
fed  upon  his  charity,  and  assembled  in  hundreds  to  take  their 
farewell  of  him  when  he  was  summoned  to  his  trial.  There  is 
an  appearance  of  simple  interest  in  his  poor  flock  there,  in  the 
way  in  which  he  casually  notices  the  “  great  wind  at  Lambeth,” 
and  how  “  many  of  the  poor  watermen  at  Lambeth  had  their 
boats  tumbled  up  and  down,  and  broken  in  pieces.”  The  Lent 
fast  was  specially  observed  in  the  household  at  Lambeth,  and 
the  Lords  of  the  High  Commission  heard  his  regrets  that  the 
“  merit  of  fasting  ”  had  so  died  away  in  the  country. 

A  deeply  penitential  tone  appears  in  his  religious  memo¬ 
randa.  The  memory  of  one  ecclesiastical  offence  that  he  had 
committed  at  a  very  early  part  of  his  life  stuck  to  him  to  the 
last,  and  the  day  on  which  he  had,  contrary  to  the  Church’s 
canons,  married  Lord  Mountjoy  to  the  divorced  Lady  Bich  (St. 
Stephen’s  Day),  was  observed  as  an  annual  day  of  fasting  and 
humiliation.  Lord  Mountjoy  had  fallen  deeply  in  love  with 
that  lady,  when  her  family  compelled  her  to  marry  Lord  Bich  ; 
and  the  result  was  unfaithfulness  on  her  part,  and  a  divorce. 
Laud  was  a  young  clergyman  then.  He  yielded  to  urgent 
entreaties  and  married  the  guilty  pair.  Prynne,  who  could  not 
understand  the  strong  language  of  self-condemnation  which  a 
sensitive  conscience  is  apt  to  use  before  God  in  prayer  or  in 
private  memoranda,  thought  that  some  horrible,  unutterable 
crime  was  alluded  to  in  the  expressions  of  guilt  and  anguish 
with  which  Laud  referred  to  this  act.  “  My  cross  about  the 
Earl  of  Devon’s  marriage,  Dec.  26,  1605.  Die  Jovis. — 0  Deus 
mens ,  resjpiw  servum  tuum  et  miserere  mei  secundum  viscera 
misericordicc  tuce  ” — it  is  his  Latin  prayer — “  I  am  become  a 
scandal  to  Thy  name,  serving  my  own  ambition,  others’  sins. 
Others  persuaded,  hut  my  own  conscience  loudly  forbade  me. 
Let  not  this  marriage  divorce  my  soul  from  Thy  bosom.  Ah  ! 
how  much  better  had  I  suffered  martyrdom  with  Thy  proto¬ 
martyr  upon  his  commemoration  day,  than  done  the  pleasure  of 
too  faithless,  careless  friends.  I  promised  myself  darkness  in 


Archbishop  Laud. 


H7 


my  crime,  but  lo ;  it  flew  out ;  I  became  more  open  than  the 
daylight.  So  didst  Thou  choose,  of  Thy  undeserved  mercy  to 
me,  to  fill  my  face  with  shame,  that  I  might  learn  to  seek  Thy 
name.  Even  to  this  day,  after  so  often  repeated  prayers,  and 
sorrow  and  confusion  of  soul,  again  and  again  poured  out  before 
Thee,  my  sin  weighs  heavily.”  The  prayer  goes  on  to  allude  to 
another  sin  “  which,  on  the  very  same  day  of  the  year,  I  fell 
into,  not  made  humble  or  cautious  enough  by  the  first.  I  am 
not  stoned  for  my  sins,  but  stoned  by  them.  Now  raise  me  up 
again,  that  I  die  no  more,  but  live,  and,  living,  rejoice  in  Thee.” 
Some  particular  sin  marks  two  other  days  in  his  book  of  devo¬ 
tions.  “  Julii  28,  1617.  Die  Lunae,”  and  below  is  added,  aEt 
Martii  6,  1641.  I  wandered  out  of  my  way  from  Thee  into 
a  foul  and  strange  path.  Thou  madest  me  see  both  my  folly 
and  my  weakness.”  Dangers  and  accidents  which  happened 
gave  him  the  idea  that  he  had  committed  some  sins  of  which 
God  was  reminding  him ;  that  he  had  not  been  living  strictly 
enough,  and  that  these  were  calls  to  greater  strictness  and 
severity  with  himself.  “  St.  John’s  College  on  fire  under  the 
staircase  in  the  chaplain’s  chamber,  by  the  library.  Sept.  26 
and  July  28,  days  of  observation  to  me.  0  misericors  Pater, 
quo  me  vertam  ?  I  who,  going  out  and  coming  in,  have  sinned 
against  Thee.  Abii  cum  prodigo  prodigies  in  longinquam  re- 
gionem.  Dissipavi  substantiam  meam ,  tuam  luxuriose.  Then 
first  I  felt  all  spent,  and  me  meet  only  for  the  companionship  of 
swines.  Yet  did  not  even  that  unclean  life,  and  famine  of  Thy 
grace,  make  me  think  of  returning.  Returned  from  an  in¬ 
auspicious  journey,  lo  !  now,  Thy  judgments,  Lord,  pursue  me. 
The  fire  catches  the  roof  under  which  I  dwell.  The  Lord  heard, 
and  was  wroth  :  so  the  fire  was  kindled  in  J acob,  and  there 
came  up  heavy  displeasure  against  Israel.  Eor  my  wickedness, 
I  doubt  not,  conflagration  threatened  my  college  and  me ;  for 
while  I  was  intent  on  extinguishing  the  fire,  I  had  very  near 
risk  of  being  extinguished  by  it.  But  lo  !  Thy  mercy,  0  Lord, 
snatched  me  by  a  miracle  out  of  the  flame  ;  for  while  a  friendly 
hand  by  me  pulled  me  by  force  away,  the  spot  where  else  I 
was  going  to  put  my  foot  burst  out  with  the  flame;  the  stairs 
sank,  and  I  should  have  gone  with  them.  0  peccata  mea, 


148 


Archbishop  Land. 


nunquam  satis  deflenda  !  0  miser icordia  tua,  Domine,  nun- 

quam  satis  jprcedicanda  !  0  pcenitentia  nunquam  milii  magis 

necessaria  !  0  Gratia  tua ,  Domine,  liumillime  et  jugiter  im- 

qoloranda  !  I  rise,  0  Lord  and  Father,  I  come  :  with  slow  and 
feeble  step  I  come,  I  confess  to  Thee.  Make  me  what  Thou 
wilt,  but  only  Thine ;  and  as  the  terror  of  that  instant  did,  so 
let  its  memory  ever  burn  out  the  dregs  and  refuse  of  my  sins, 
and  be  within  me  a  fire  of  charity  and  devotion,  flaming  up  with 
flames  of  love  to  Thee.”  “  Feb.  5,  1628  [he  broke  a  sinew  on  a 
journey],  die  Martis  tendonem  fregi,  et  iter!’  The  Latin  prayer 
explains.  He  has  the  Augustinian  way  of  putting  the  account 
of  his  accidents  in  the  form  of  addresses  to  God.  “  0  Domine 
Misericors,  Thy  blessed  name  be  glorified.  As  I  was  travelling 
with  the  King  upon  duty,  forgetful  of  Thee  and  human  acci¬ 
dents,  and  full  of  self-confidence,  I  trod  upon  treacherous  earth 
and  broke  my  sinew.  I  was  lifted  into  a  carriage  and  taken  to 
Hampton.  My  nerves  felt  excruciating  torture.  I  should  have 
certainly  fallen  into  a  raging  fever,  had  not  an  efflux  of  blood 
relieved  me.  I  laboured  under  great  weakness,  and  walked  lame 
for  two  years.  I  feel  some  infirmity  still ;  but  immortal  thanks 
to  Thee,  0  most  blessed  Trinity,  Thou  didst  restore  me  the  per¬ 
fect  use  of  my  feet,  and  strengthened  my  goings.  Direct  them 
now,  0  Lord,  in  the  way  of  Thy  commandments,  that  I  halt  not 
between  the  world  and  Thee.  I  will  run  the  way  of  Thy  testi¬ 
monies,  when  Thou  hast  set  my  heart  at  liberty.  Defer  not,  I  pray, 
my  heart’s  liberty,  my  foot’s  establishment  in  Thy  righteousness.” 

There  is  something  in  his  dreams  which  looks  the  same  way. 
Fragmentary,  queer,  and  grotesque  as  they  are,  they  have  a 
simple  sweetness  in  them  at  times  which  makes  them  look  like 
signs  of  the  man  ;  they  breathe  an  amiableness  of  heart,  unfold 
a  quiet  devotional  scenery,  and  have  an  ethical  air  about  them. 
It  is  rather  an  indulgent  sentiment,  but  we  are  inclined  to  say 
that  good  dreams  are  much  truer  signs  of  a  man  than  bad 
dreams  are;  that  the  one  do  not  tell  against  him  in  at  all 
the  same  proportion  in  which  the  other  tell  in  his  favour. 
"We  think  good  people  may  have  bad  dreams,  be  in  a  passion, 
and  b  eliave  themselves  extravagantly  and  outrageously  in  their 
sleep  ;  but  that  bad  people  cannot  well  have  good  ones.  There 


Archbishop  Laud. 


H9 


are  certain  ideas  and  forms  of  feeling  which  come  out  in 
dreams,  which  cannot  come  out  there  if  the  mind  itself  has 
them  not  in  the  first  instance  ;  moral  scenes  which  the  mind 
could  not  enter  into  and  appreciate  even  in  sleep,  unless  it  had 
an  internal  taste  for  them.  Dreams  indeed,  to  quote  Laud’s 
own  dictum,  “  are  not  in  the  power  of  him  that  hath  them,  hut 
in  the  unruliness  of  the  fancy,  which  in  broken  sleep  wanders 
which  way  it  pleases,  and  shapes  what  it  pleases ;  ”  hut  they 
may  at  the  same  time  he  unconscious  indications  of  character, 
the  more  genuine  even  for  being  so.  The  favoured  sleeper  sees 
forms  and  countenances  before  him  in  winning  attitudes  and 
expressions,  friendly  faces  of  living  o\'  departed,  figures  smiling 
or  beckoning,  standing,  or  leaning,  or  passing  by,  or  in  quiet 
domestic  circle,  or  in  garden  group  around  him  ; — visitors  they 
seem  from  a  calmer  world,  yet  not  sepulchral  but  genial  ones  ; 
he  feels  at  home,  he  looks  around  him,  or  goes  up  to  one  and 
then  another  with  modest  curiosity ;  he  follows  the  moving 
imagery,  and  imbibes  the  dream’s  pictorial  solaces  and  calm. 
True,  these  dreamy  creations  come  of  themselves,  and  he  did 
not  raise  them,  yet  they  had  their  origin  within  and  not  out  of 
himself,  and  the  mind  has  a  property  in  them,  if  it  owns  and 
ratifies  them  in  its  waking  state.  The  spontaneous  scenery  and 
interior  world  which  sleep  lights  up  are  then  its  own,  and 
memory  appropriates  them.  The  mind  dwells  afterwards  on 
what  it  saw,  the  gentle  look  and  glance  serene,  and  marvellous 
expression  that  drew  the  eye  towards  it,  and  touched  an  inner 
spring  and  finer  chord,  and  called  up  new  and  fragrant  sensa¬ 
tions  in  the  admiring,  dreaming  mind. 

We  say  an  affectionate  and  devotional  character  appears  in 
Laud’s  dreams.  We  mean  that  if  we  dropped  suddenly  upon 
them  anywhere,  and  knew  nothing  of  the  person,  we  should 
say  he  was  a  good  man — kind  and  tender-hearted,  concerned 
for  those  who  were  connected  with  him,  and  were  about  him. 
He  has  his  relations,  friends,  and  servants,  in  his  thoughts,  and 
he  sees  them  in  his  dreams.  Friends  smile  and  foes  frown 
upon  him  in  his  dreams  ;  and  the  new  friendship  and  lately 
formed  connection  with  E.  B.,  C.  D.,  and  the  rest  of  his  mysteri¬ 
ous  alphabet,  is  going  on  well  or  ill.  In  either  case  he  dreams 


150  Archbishop  Laud. 

about  them ;  and  sees  the  cheering  or  the  saddening  look. 
Dreams  are  part  of  his  society — vents  to  his  mind,,  his  journal- 
confidants.  They  express  some  deep  religious  state  of  mind. 
— Sunday  night.  My  dream  of  my  blessed  Lord  and  Saviour 
Jesus  Christ.  One  of  the  most  comfortable  passages  I  ever  had 
in  my  life  ” — or  some  vague  melancholy  one — “  I  dreamed  of 
the  burial  of  I  know  not  whom,  and  that  I  stood  by  the  grave. 
I  awaked  sad.”  His  father  and  mother  appear  to  him.  “  Epi¬ 
phany-eve. — In  the  night  I  dreamed  that  my  mother,  long  since 
dead,  stood  by  my  bed,  and  drawing  aside  the  clothes  a  little, 
looked  pleasantly  upon  me  ;  and  that  I  was  glad  to  see  her  with 
so  merry  an  aspect.  She  then  showed  me  a  certain  old  man,  long 
since  deceased,  whom,  when  alive,  I  both  knew  and  loved.  He 
seemed  to  lie  upon  the  ground,  merry  enough,  but  with  a  wrinkled 
countenance.  His  name  was  Grove.  While  I  was  preparing  to 
salute  him  I  awoke.”  “  Jan.  24,  Friday.— At  night  I  dreamed 
that  my  father  (who  died  forty- six  years  ago)  came  to  me,  and  to 
my  thinking  he  was  as  well  and  cheerful  as  ever  I  saw  him.  He 
asked  me  what  I  did  here  ?  And  after  some  speech  I  asked  him 
how  long  he  would  stay  with  me  ?  He  answered  that  he  would 
stay  till  lie  had  me  away  with  him.  I  am  not  moved  with  dreams, 
yet  I  thought  fit  to  remember  this.”  His  old  friend  King  James 
appears  :  “  I  saw  him  only  passing  by  swiftly.  He  was  of  a  plea¬ 
sant  and  serene  countenance.  In  passing  he  saw  me,  beckoned 
to  me,  smiled,  and  was  immediately  withdrawn  from  my  sight.” 
We  encounter  the  suspicions  and  apprehensions  of  public 
life  :  “  Dr.  Theodore  Prince  admonished  me  concerning  Ma.  3, 
and  that  he  was  unfaithful  to  me,  and  discovered  all  he  knew, 
and  that  I  should  take  heed  of  him  and  trust  him  no  more  ” — 
and  its  cheerful  side  :  “  Toward  the  morning  I  dreamed  that 
L.  M.  St.  came  to  me  the  next  day,  and  showed  me  all  the 
kindness  I  could  ask.”  It  follows  :  “  L.  M.  St.  did  come  to  me, 
and  was  very  kind  to  me  the  next  day.”  The  dream  was  ful¬ 
filled,  but  he  adds,  “  Somniis  tamen  hated  multum  fido.”  A 
dream  about  an  old  servant  has  a  remarkable  coincidence 
attending  it  :  “  This  morning,  between  four  and  five  of  the 
clock,  lying  at  Hampton  Court,  I  dreamed  that  I  was  going 
out  in  haste,  and  that  when  I  had  come  to  my  outer  chamber, 


Archbishop  Laud. 


1 5 1 

there  was  my  servant  Will.  Pennel,  in  the  same  riding-suit 
which  he  had  on,  on  that  day  sevennight  at  Hampton  Court 
with  me.  Methought  I  wondered  to  see  him  (for  I  left  him 
sick  at  home),  and  asked  him  how  he  did,  and  what  he  made 
there.  And  that  he  answered  me,  he  came  to  receive  my 
blessing ;  and  with  that  fell  on  his  knees.  That  herewith  I 
prayed  over  him,  and  therewith  awaked.”  It  follows  :  “  When 
I  was  up,  I  told  this  to  them  of  my  chamber,  and  added  that  I 
should  find  Pennel  dead  or  dying.  My  coach  came  ;  and  when 
I  came  home  I  found  him  past  sense,  and  giving  up  the  ghost. 
So  my  prayers,  as  they  have  frequently  before,  commended  him 
to  God.”  Laud’s  kind  of  parental  relation  for  those  under  him, 
and  feeling  for  old  acquaintances  and  old  servants,  and  all 
about  him,  is  a  great  feature  in  him ;  and  we  see  when — 
“my  ancient  friend,  Mr.  Pearshall,”  dies,  and  when  “Mr. 
Adam  Porbes,  my  ancient,  loving,  and  faithful  servant  and 
steward,  who  had  served  me  full  forty-two  years,  died,  to  my 
great  loss  and  grief ;  ”  and  when  “  my  ancient  friend  E.  R. 
came  and  performed  great  kindnesses  to  me,  which  I  can  never 
forget.”  And  the  conversion  of  Kenelm  Digby  to  Rome  is 
annoying  to  him  on  account  of  the  fact,  but  especially  because 
he  never  told  Laud  of  his  intention  beforehand,  whose  old 
friendship  had  a  right  to  know  it. 

Or  we  turn  to  his  patronage  of  religious  minds,  and  anxiety 
to  secure  the  benefit  of  their  services  to  the  Church — and  see 
him  the  ordainer  of  Nicholas  Eerrar  and  George  Herbert; 
putting  Jeremy  Taylor  into  All- Souls ;  promoting  Cosin  and 
others.  He  met  Herbert  at  Wilton  House,  who  had  been 
oscillating  in  his  mind  long  between  the  Court  and  the  priest¬ 
hood.  A  conversation  with  Laud  had  the  immediate  effect 
of  sending  for  the  tailor  from  Salisbury  to  cut  him  out  a 
canonical  suit.  Cosin’s  Hours  of  Devotion  for  the  Court  ladies 
was  an  attempt  to  supply  the  regularity  of  devotional  exer¬ 
cises  of  the  Roman  Catholic  ladies  about  Henrietta  Maria, 
and  so  take  away  a  religious  scandal  from  the  English  Court. 

His  patronage  of  the  Eerrar  family,  and  the  devotional 
establishment  at  Little  Gidding,  was  marked.  W e  know  pretty 
well  what  would  be  thought  of  such  a  religious  retreat  now  ;  a 


Archbishop  Laud. 


1 52 

domestic  monastery  of  the  strictest  rule,  where  the  whole 
Psalter  was  recited  every  twenty-four  hours,  and  prayer  never 
stopped  night  or  day.  Nicholas  Ferrar  slept  on  bearskin  on  the 
boards,  in  a  loose  frieze  gown,  rose  always  at  midnight,  and 
watched  in  his  oratory  three  nights  of  the  week.  We  do  not 
want  to  make  invidious  comparisons,  but  would  not  men  in 
station  now  be  found  to  look  rather  coldly  upon  such  a  place  ? 
and  among  the  mass  what  suspicions,  black  looks,  ominous 
gestures,  and  shakes  of  the  head  would  arise  on  the  subject  ! 
People  would  be  divided  between  the  hypothesis  of  superstition 
and  insanity  to  account  for  the  phenomenon  :  King  and  Court 
would  not,  of  course,  know  of  its  existence.  Imagine,  indeed, 
the  royal  suite  now  going  out  of  their  way  to  see  such  a  place 
— “The  King  and  the  Prince,  the  Palsgrave,  the  Duke  of 
Lennox,  and  divers  other  nobles  staying  a  morning  there” — 
visiting  chapel  and  hall,  and  looking  into  all  the  corners.  The 
younger  members  of  the  Court  were  not  quite  so  grave  as  their 
seniors.  The  “  young  lords  went  into  the  buttery,  and  there 
found  apple-pies  and  cheese-cakes,  and  came  out  with  pieces  in 
their  hands,  laughing,  to  the  Prince ;  and — ‘  Sir,  will  your 
Highness  taste  ?  ’  ”  Charles,  especially,  admired  the  old  poor 
widows’  alms-houses,  and  their  clean  wainscoted  well-rubbed 
rooms — “  God’s  blessing  upon  the  founders  of  it  ” — and  turning 
to .  the  Palsgrave,  “  Time  was  you  would  have  thought  such  a 
lodging  not  amiss.”  The  Palsgrave  entirely  assented.  A  nice 
speech  accompanied  the  five  gold  pieces  he  then  took  out  of  his 
pocket,  for  the  benefit  of  the  poor  widows, — “  It  is  all  I  have, 
else  they  should  have  more”  [these  he  had  won  the  night  before 
of  the  Palsgrave,  at  cards  at  Huntingdon,  says  the  document]  ; 
“  tell  them  to  pray  for  me.”  After  walking  and  talking,  his 
Majesty  finds  the  evening  closing  in.  “  It  grows  late,  the  sun 
is  going  down — we  must  away.”  So  “  their  horses  were  brought 
to  the  door.  The  King  mounting,  those  of  the  family,  men  and 
women,  all  kneeled  down,  and  heartily  prayed  God  to  bless  and 
defend  him  from  his  enemies.”  He  took  off  his  hat,  "  Pray, 
pray,  for  my  speedy  return  again,”  he  said,  and  then  rode  away. 

Laud  patronised  Little  Gidding,  and  showed  great  affection 
to  young  Nicholas  Ferrar,  who  came  up  to  Court  with  presents 


Archbishop  Laud. 


153 


of  the  home- manufactured  volumes  of  the  Gidding  press  and 
binding-shop.  Annual  compliments  of  this  kind  passed  be¬ 
tween  Charles  and  the  Ferrars ;  as  soon  as  he  had  one  book, 
he  was  so  pleased  with  it  that  he  insisted  on  having  another. 
The  “  purple  velvet,  gilt,”  the  “  green  velvet,  gilt,”  the  “  great 
broad  strings,  edged  with  gold  lace,  and  curiously  bound,”  were 
highly  appreciated;  and  “glorious,”  “diamonds,”  “jewels,” 
“  precious  stones,”  “  crystals,”  came  thick  from  the  royal  mouth, 
as  the  ornature  was  inspected.  He  read  the  books  (one  was 
“  A  Harmony  of  the  Gospels  ;  ”  another  of  the  “  Kings  and 
Chronicles”)  and  made  marginal  notes.  Young  Nicholas  came 
up  to  London  on  one  of  these  occasions  of  a  presentation,  and 
went  straight,  as  he  had  directions  to  do,  to  “  My  Lord  of 
Canterbury.”  Conducted  into  the  Archbishop’s  presence,  he 
“  knelt  down,  craved  his  blessing,  and  kissed  his  hand.”  “  My 
Lord  embraced  him  very  lovingly,  took  him  up,  and  after  some 
salutes,”  had  the  book  shown  him,  and  was  enchanted.  Nicholas 
had  to  prepare  himself  for  presentation  to  the  King  next  day. 
Next  day,  Maundy- Thursday,  the  Archbishop  led  his  young 
proUgS  into  a  room  where  the  King  stood  by  the  fire,  with 
many  nobles  attending  him.  “  What,  have  you  brought  with 
you  those  rarities  and  jewels  you  told  me  of  ?”  “  Yes,  here  is 

the  young  gentleman  and  his  works.”  The  Archbishop  led 
him  by  the  hand  up  to  the  King ;  the  box  was  opened,  and 
the  whole  party  were  full  of  admiration.  The  book  wras  the 
“  Gospel  of  our  Lord  and  Blessed  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  in 
eight  several  languages  ;  ”  all  the  undivided  learning  of  young 
Ferrar  himself.  Charles  was  astonished,  asked  the  youth’s  age, 
and  resolved  on  the  spot  to  send  him  to  Oxford  at  his  own 
expense.  “  But  what  a  pity,”  said  Charles,  when  the  youth  had 
retired,  “  was  that  impediment  in  his  tongue  !  ”  Laud  did  not 
think  so ;  for  if  the  young  gentleman  had  had  the  full  use  of 
his  natural  tongue,  the  chance  was  he  would  not  have  gained 
so  many  written  ones.  Lord  Holland  recommended  pebbles  ; 
Charles  had  tried  pebbles  himself,  and  found  they  did  no  good  ; 
he  should  learn  to  sing,  and  would  find  singing  a  good  cure. 
The  same  envoy  brought  a  book  for  Prince  Charles  too  ;  the 
pretty  pictures  made  a  great  sensation.  “  Will  you  not  make 


154 


Archbishop  Laud. 


me  such  another  fine  book  ?  ”  said  the  little  Duke  of  York — “do.” 
Certainly  his  Grace  “  should  have  one  without  fail”  “  But  how 
long  will  it  he  before  I  have  it  ?  ”  “  Very  soon.”  “  Yes,  hut  how 
long  will  that  be?  tell  the  ladies  at  Gidding  to  be  quick.”  Young 
Ferrar  was  then  introduced  at  the  Court  table,  and  dined  with 
“  divers  young  lords,  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  and  others.” 

The  Archbishop,  at  parting  the  next  day,  informed  him  of 
the  King’s  good  intentions,  and  filled  his  young  mind  with  a 
grand  object  for  his  Oxford  career.  “  The  King  would  have 
this  work  of  the  New  Testament  in  twenty-four  languages,”  and 
Nicholas  Ferrar  was  to  be  the  editor  of  the  grand  polyglot,  and 
to  have  all  the  help  of  the  learning  of  the  nation  at  his  com¬ 
mand.  “  The  youth,  kneeling  down,  took  the  Archbishop  by 
the  hand,  and  kissed  it.  The  Archbishop  took  him  up  in  his 
arms,  and  laid  his  hand  upon  his  cheek,  and  earnestly  besought 
God  Almighty  to  bless  him,  and  increase  all  graces  in  him,  and 
fit  him  every  day  more  and  more  for  an  instrument  of  his 
glory  here  upon  earth,  and  a  saint  in  heaven.  God  bless  you  ! 
God  bless  you  !  I  have  told  your  father  what  is  to  be  done  for 
you  after  the  holidays.  God  will  provide  for  you  better  than 
your  father  can.  God  bless  you  and  keep  you.”  Young 
Ferrar  was  cut  off  before  he  fulfilled  the  Archbishop’s  predic¬ 
tions.  A  premature  intellect  had  undermined  his  health,  and 
he  died  not  long  after  this  scene. 

We  must  return  to  our  subject.  Laud,  now  Archbishop 
and  Premier,  and  in  the  full  swing  of  official  magnificence, 
had  no  thought  of  the  otium  cum  dignitate  in  his  head.  Thirty 
years  of  hard  continuous  work  at  Oxford  and  at  Court  had 
cemented  him;  he  was  too  old  to  change;  he  had  cast  his  own 
mould,  and  it  was  a  good  hard  one.  The  regions  of  damask,  vel¬ 
vet,  and  crimson  glow — the  incensed  rich  air  of  station — the 
'‘violets,  blue  and  full-blown  roses,”  and  soft  encircling  pomp 
and  cushioned  ease,  embraced  a  very  tough  insensible  material 
in  him.  The  sterling,  wiry  mind  went  on  working  in  its  own 
hole,  stuck  to  its  objects,  pushed  for  results,  and  saw,  in  the 
ramifications  of  office,  simply  channels  of  employment,  and 
nothing  more.  The  pure,  unalloyed,  practical  view  excluded 
the  idle,  self-important  one.  Laud  was  sixty-two  when  he  was 


Archbishop  Laud. 


1 55 


made  Archbishop,  and  he  was  then  in  the  very  thick  of  the 
struggle,  and  had  the  world  before  him.  Still  further  and 
further, — further  from  the  Archbishop  than  from  the  President 
of  St.  John’s,  fled  the  inward  consummation  and  the  prcemium 
virtutis,  the  elysium  of  the  official  mind,  the  blushing  and  the 
blossoming,  the  state  when  cares  are  pleasures  and  duties  treats, 
and  the  happy  conscience  and  the  satisfied  taste  expand  over 
their  department  of  genial  exertion  and  dignity  ;  and  the  choice 
nest  warms  under  the  maternal  wing,  and  the  sunbeams  glitter 
on  the  garden-plot.  0  happy  indescribable  state  of  ministerial, 
parliamentary,  judicial,  magisterial,  episcopal,  archidiaconal, 
collegiate,  parochial  efflorescence  ;  union  of  peace,  plenty,  and 
virtue,  oil  and  perfume  of  the  soul,  development  of  life,  and 
climax  of  man  !  and  ill-fated  being  he  who  does  not  contrive 
to  get  admittance  within  your  sacred  enclosure,  especially  if  he 
has  been  so  presumptuous  as  to  decline  it !  The  wide  ocean 
rages  outside  of  you,  clouds  lower,  and  restless  illimitableness 
distresses  the  eye.  And  triple  brass  for  him,  “  who  can  love 
to  hear  the  winds  roar,  and  calmly  gaze  on  floating  monsters, 
and  a  swollen  sea,  and  those  dreadful  rocks,  the  Acroceraunia.” 

Melancholy  forebodings  sounded  in  Laud’s  ear  as  he  entered 
upon  his  archiepiscopal  course,  and  a  determination  to  go 
through  with  everything  mingled  with  a  kind  of  gloom  and 
hopelessness  as  to  how  it  would  all  end.  “  My  Lord,”  is  his 
answer  to  Strafford’s  congratulations,  “  I  thank  you  heartily 
for  your  kind  wishes  to  me,  that  God  would  send  me  many  and 
many  happy  days  where  I  am  now  to  be  :  Amen.  I  can  do 
little  for  myself,  if  I  cannot  say  so.  But  truly,  my  Lord,  I 
look  for  neither :  not  for  many,  for  I  am  in  years,  and  have 
had  a  troublesome  life ;  not  for  happy,  for  I  have  no  hope  to 
do  the  good  I  desire.  And  besides,  I  doubt  I  shall  never  be 
able  to  hold  my  health  there  one  year ;  for  instead  of  all  the 
jolting  which  I  have  had  over  the  stones  between  London- 
house  and  Whitehall,  which  was  almost  daily,  I  shall  now  have 
no  exercise,  but  slide  over  in  a  barge  to  the  Court  and  Star 
Chamber.  And  in  truth,  my  Lord,  I  speak  seriously  :  I  have 
had  a  heaviness  hanging  over  me  ever  since  I  was  nominated 
to  the  place,  and  I  can  give  myself  no  account  of  it,  unless  it 


Archbishop  Laud. 


156 

proceed  from  an  apprehension  that  there  is  more  expected  from 
me  than  the  craziness  of  these  times  will  give  me  leave  to  do/’ 
“  Methinks  I  see  a  clond  arising,  and  threatening  the  Church 
of  England  ;  God,  of  His  mercy,  dissipate  it,”  was  the  notice  of 
his  Diary  years  ago,  as  soon  as  the  House  of  Commons  war 
with  Montague  began.  With  the  reader’s  permission  we  will 
go  hack  an  interval,  and  take  him  to  the  scene.  The  theolo¬ 
gical  war  had  begun  some  time  before,  upon  the  national  field  ; 
and  a  series  of  collisions  between  Laud  and  the  House  of 
Commons  ushered  in  the  contest,  which  afterwards  overwhelmed 
Church  and  State.  It  is  curious  to  see  the  first  stages  of  a 
great  struggle. 

Mr.  Richard  Montague  was  a  Fellow  of  Eton  College,  and 
Prebendary  of  Windsor,  an  able  and  a  learned  man.  The 
acuteness,  point,  and  clearness  which  his  controversial  writings 
show,  give  him,  notwithstanding  a  too  unchastised  form  in 
which  he  clothes  them,  an  undoubted  rank  as  a  man  of  talent. 
Some  Jesuits  had  found  their  way  into  his  parish,  with  a  tract 
against  the  English  Church — “  A  new  Gag  for  an  old  Gospel.” 
Montague  answered  it  by  showing  that  the  doctrines  of  the 
English  Church  were  much  higher  than  the  assailants  had 
given  her  credit  for,  and  issued  the  “  Gagger.”  The  “  G  agger  ” 
came  under  the  criticism  of  other  eyes  than  those  of  Jesuits, 
and  its  statement  of  Church  of  England  doctrines  irritated  the 
Puritanical  party,  who  saw  in  them  simple  unqualified  Popery  ; 
and  Montague  was  threatened  with  an  arraignment  before  a 
most  formidable  theological  tribunal. 

This  tribunal  was  the  House  of  Commons.  We  do  not  at 
this  day  regard  the  honourable  House  as  much  of  a  theological 
body,  nor  does  it  consider  itself  so.  It  was  different  then. 
The  House  of  Commons  was  a  Calvinistic  body  then — not 
Calvinists  individually,  perhaps  not  one-tenth  part  of  them,  or 
caring  enough  about  it — but  a  Calvinistic  body.  Bodies  come 
to  act  under  certain  influences  as  bodies.  Corporations, 
boards,  commissions,  parliaments,  admit  some  active  element 
into  them  which  gradually  rises,  and  gets  itself  looked  up  to, 
sets  the  standard,  and  lays  down  the  law.  Bodies  subject 
themselves  to  a  ruling  spirit,  which,  even  where  it  is  not  felt, 


Archbishop  Laud, 


!57 


is  deferred  to  among  its  members  as  a  matter  of  course ;  and 
the  aggregate,  as  such,  takes  that  line,  and  seems  to  have  a 
character  and  soul  of  its  own  independent  of  its  individual 
parts.  The  House  of  Commons,  as  a  body,  adopted 
Puritanism  :  in  adopting  Puritanism,  it  adopted  the  popular, 
the  vigorous,  the  ambitious  religious  principle  of  the  day. 
The  House  of  Commons  represented  the  political  element  in 
the  nation,  and  was  then  making  its  first  approaches  to  that 
gigantic  power  to  which  it  has  since  attained — that  supremacy 
of  earth  and  human  will  which  has  stamped  the  sad  though 
magnificent  career  of  English  politics.  It  represented  the 
State  pure  with  its  natural  instinctive  antipathy  to  Church 
power,  and  it  saw  in  Puritanism  the  instrument  for  crushing 
it.  With  that  sharpness  of  instinct  with  which  a  political 
movement  catches  at  the  convenient  stepping-stone  for  its  own 
objects,  the  House  of  Commons  threw  itself  into  the  Puritani¬ 
cal  mould,  and  became  Calvinistic  on  the  same  principle  on 
which  it  is  now  latitudinarian.  It  gathered  into  it  the  strength, 
passion,  and  impulse  of  the  nation,  and  became  the  centre  and 
rally ing-point  of  a  new  and  intense  world  of  feeling  and  power 
that  had  risen  up.  It  became  a  regularly  theological  assembly. 
That  “  lower  depth  ”  of  hypocrisy,  by  which  the  powers  of 
earth  actually  contrive  to  believe  their  own  religious  adoption, 
and  fondle  the  base  instrument,  was  attained  to.  It  discussed 
doctrines,  prosed,  preached,  and  exhorted,  and  displayed  all 
manner  of  unction.  It  was  the  Exeter  Hall  of  the  present 
day,  and  the  “  godly  ”  M.P.  threw  up  his  eyes  at  the  very 
mention  of  Popery,  and  congratulated  himself  and  the  rest  of 
the  “  godly  ”  honourable  House  that  they  were  not  members 
of  Antichrist.  Sympathetic  compliments  passed  between  the 
“  godly  ’’  House  and  the  “  godly  ”  out  of  the  House  ;  and  there 
were  pious  diplomatic  connections  with  nonconformist  minis¬ 
ters.  The  House  believed  in  predestination.  The  House  was 
powerful  on  the  subject  of  free  grace.  The  House  loved  the 
pure  Gospel.  The  House  grieved  for  the  hardness  of  the 
human  heart  and  the  opposition  of  the  natural  man  to  truth. 
The  House  was  severe  on  the  worldliness  of  prelates.  The 
House  was  a  religious  prig  of  the  first  order.  Heylin  has  his 


Archbishop  Laud. 


*58 

laugh,  and  facetiously  attributes  these  pretensions  to  the  im¬ 
pression  which  their  session  in  the  Divinity  School  at  Oxford 
made  on  them  : — “  The  Divinity  School  was  prepared  for  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  a  chair  made  for  the  Speaker  in  or 
near  the  place  in  which  his  Majesty’s  Professor  of  Divinity  did 
usually  read  his  public  lecture  and  moderate  in  all  public 
disputations.  And  this  first  put  them  into  conceit  that  the 
determining  of  all  points  of  controversy  did  belong  to  them. 
As  Yibius  Kufus,  in  the  story,  having  married  Tully’s  widow, 
and  bought  Csesar’s  chair,  conceived  he  was  then  in  a  way  to 
gain  the  eloquence  of  the  one  and  the  power  of  the  other.  For 
after  that  we  find  no  Parliament  without  a  committee  of  reli¬ 
gion,  and  no  committee  of  religion  but  what  did  think  itself 
sufficiently  instructed  to  manage  the  greatest  controversies  of 
divinity  which  were  brought  before  them.” 

Yates  and  Ward,  two  Puritanical  lecturers  at  Ipswich, 
sent  information  about  Montague  to  the  House.  James  was 
then  on  the  throne.  Montague,  in  alarm,  appealed  to  the 
Crown,  and  was  protected ;  and  published,  in  consequence  of 
this  appeal,  his  “  Appello  Ccesarem which  repeated  in  a 
stronger  form  the  statements  of  the  first  book. 

The  first  Parliament  of  Charles  met,  and  immediately  sum¬ 
moned  the  audacious  offender.  “  He  was  brought  to  the  bar 
of  the  House,  and  the  Speaker  declared  to  him  the  pleasure  of 
the  House.”  They  deferred  the  censure,  but  in  the  interim 
committed  him  to  the  “  sergeant’s  ward,”  and  made  him  find 
bail  to  the  amount  of  two  thousand  pounds.  Charles  was  very 
indignant  at  this  stretch  of  power  over  one  of  his  own  chap¬ 
lains  ;  Laud  engaged  Buckingham  in  the  cause,  and  a  formal 
letter  from  himself  and  two  other  Bishops,  Kochester  and  Ox¬ 
ford,  laid  down  the  Church  law  on  the  subject.  They  pro¬ 
tested  against  the  assumption  of  ecclesiastical  power  by  Parlia¬ 
ment,  and  declared  that  Convocation  was  the  only  theological 
tribunal  to  which  the  Church  would  or  could  submit.  The 
letter,  however,  was  very  moderate,  claimed  some  doctrines  as 
necessary,  and  demanded  a  latitude  for  others.  “  The  opinions 
which  troubled  many  men  in  the  late  book  of  Mr.  Montague 
were  some  of  them  such  as  were  expressly  the  resolved  doc- 


Archbishop  Laud. 


159 


trines  of  the  Church  of  England ;  some  of  them  such  as  were 
fit  only  for  schools,  and  to  he  left  at  liberty  for  learned  men, 
so  that  they  keep  themselves  peaceable,  and  distract  not  the 
Church.  They  did  not  intend  to  make  men  subscribe  the 
school  opinions ;  they  only  did  not  want  to  be  intimidated 
themselves  into  abandoning  the  doctrines  of  the  Church/’  The 
Commons  saw  a  stand  made  against  them,  and  showed  their 
teeth.  When  the  next  motion  for  supplies  came  on,  they 
were  so  deep  in  spiritual  subjects  that  no  answer  could  be  got 
out  of  them  on  the  sublunary  one.  Charles  urged  his  “  press¬ 
ing  occasions,  the  necessities  of  the  fleet,  the  eyes  of  the  con¬ 
federates  that  were  fixed  on  him.”  The  House,  in  return,  told 
him  of  the  growth  of  Popery,  expressed  their  fears,  and  humbly 
offered  their  assistance  in  checking  it. 

Charles’s  second  Parliament  opened  with  a  sermon  from 
Laud  on  unity.  “  How  may  unity  be  preserved  in  Church  and 
State?  How?  I  will  tell  you.  Would  you  keep  the  State 
in  unity  ?  Take  heed  of  breaking  the  peace  of  the  Church. 
The  peace  of  the  State  depends  much  upon  it ;  for,  divide 
Christ  in  the  hearts  of  men,  or  divide  the  minds  of  men  about 
their  hopes  of  salvation  in  Christ,  and  tell  me  what  unity 
there  will  be  ?  ”  Other  prey  was  in  scent,  however,  now, 
and  Montague,  superseded  by  Buckingham,  was  “  kept  cold  ” 
till  the  next  Parliament,  when  the  attack  was  renewed  with 
increased  vigour.  Charles  was  frightened,  and  thought  it 
safest  to  end  the  matter  bv  calling  in  the  obnoxious  book. 
The  concession  gave  offence  to  the  Church  party,  and  was 
thought  a  “  bending  of  religion  to  policy.”  But  Laud  made  it 
up  to  Montague  the  next  opportunity.  The  latter  had  a 
fellow- sufferer  in  the  person  of  a  Dr.  Mainwaring,  who  had 
been  actually  brought  to  his  knees  before  the  mighty  tribunal, 
and  been  imprisoned,  fined,  and  suspended  ;  his  sermon  burnt, 
and  himself  especially  incapacitated  from  holding  any  further 
ecclesiastical  preferment.  Laud  made  Montague  and  Main- 
waring  respectively  Bishops  of  Chichester  and  St.  David’s. 
And  the  two  victims  marched  under  the  very  face  of  the 
Lower  House  to  their  episcopal  seat  in  the  Lords. 

To  come  to  the  main  scene  of  our  history.  Laud,  in  com- 


i6o 


Archbishop  Laud. 


plete  and  undisputed  possession  of  the  Regale,  now  applied  its 
full  powers  to  effect  an  ecclesiastical  reformation  in  the  country, 
and  wielded  with  unsparing  energy  the  secular  weapon  in  his 
hands. 

The  puritanical  preachers  in  the  Church  now  overran  the 
ground  like  a  host,  and  spread  their  doctrines  with  all  the  zeal 
and  license  of  preaching  friars  of  Protestantism.  There  were 
more  quiet  intellectual  specimens  of  them,  of  whom  Baxter  was 
the  head,  who  half  despised  their  brethren ;  but  the  mass  was 
a  vulgar  disorderly  one.  They  were  the  mendicant  orders  of 
the  Reformation,  with  a  strong  mixture  of  the  hedge-priest  in 
their  constitution,  and  were  the  genuine  successors  of  the 
Lollards  and  Wycliffites  of  Archbishop  Courtenay’s  day. 
Their  whole  proceedings  take  us  back  to  that  prototype.  The 
parochial  pulpits  did  not  supply  them  with  a  sufficient  theatre, 
though  they  had  their  share  of  them  :  they  instituted  lecture¬ 
ships.  Companies  and  corporations  all  over  the  country  were 
persuaded  to  found  lectureships,  and  give  revenues  for  addi¬ 
tional  sermons  on  the  Sunday  or  week-days,  once,  twice,  or 
thrice  in  the  week.  Their  ingenuity  in  multiplying  these 
opportunities  was  prodigious.  A  lecture  once  instituted 
became,  when  they  liked,  “  a  running  lecture,”  i.e.  was  not 
confined  to  one  place,  but  ran  from  parish  to  parish.  Special 
fasts  were  appointed  by  the  authority  of  the  lecturer,  or  curate, 
for  this  or  that  alleged  reason,  in  neighbourhoods.  These  fasts 
were  pure  excuses  for  sermons,  and  were  principally  devoted  to 
the  castigation  of  the  sins  of  prelates,  and  especially  the  Arch¬ 
bishop  himself.  The  audience  fasted  by  feasting  their  ears. 
Lectures  and  fasts  were  the  sores  and  troubles  of  High  Church 
bishops  in  their  dioceses  ;  they  had  to  exert  themselves  to 
extinguish  fasts  as  often  as  they  sprung  up,  and  prohibit  the 
right  of  the  public  fasting.  One  would  imagine  that  fasting 
was  a  great  popular  sin  of  the  day.  “  His  lordship  of  Peter¬ 
borough  certifies  that  he  hath  suppressed  a  seditious  lecture  at 
Ripon,  and  divers  monthly  lectures,  with  a  fast  and  a  moderator 
(like  that  which  they  called  prophesying  in  Queen  Elizabeth’s 
time),  as  also  the  Running  Lecture,  so  called  because  the  lec¬ 
turer  went  from  village  to  village,  and  at  the  end  of  the  week 


Archbishop  Latcd. 


1 6 1 

proclaimed  where  they  should  hear  him  next,  that  his  disciples 
might  follow.  They  say  this  lecture  was  ordained  to  illumi¬ 
nate  the  dark  corners  of  that  diocese.”  Their  style  of  preaching 
was  coarse  to  a  degree  that  could  hardly  be  credited  now,  and 
which  absolutely  prevents  us  from  making  quotations.  Un¬ 
scrupulous  illustrations,  any  expression  which  came  to  hand, 
if  it  was  only  strong  enough,  anything  for  effect,  made  their 
language  about  our  Saviour  amount  sometimes  to  blasphemy, 
and  miserably  lowered  the  Bible  doctrines.  They  preached  in 
Genevan  cloaks  often,  and  did  not  even  wear  the  gown.  The 
class  was  an  English  shape  of  the  Scotch  Covenanters  and 
Cameronians,  forward,  rude,  and  undisciplined,  full  of  angry 
enthusiasm,  and  breathing  in  their  spiritual  declamations  the 
spirit  of  war  and  the  carnal  knife — of  the  holster  and  pistols 
and  jack-boots.  The  watchword  of  the  “  sword  of  the  Lord 
and  of  Gideon  ”  was  in  embryo  in  their  discourses,  and  uncon¬ 
trollable  confidence  and  self-will  carried  them  along.  They 
represented  a  grotesque  religious  mixture,  which  the  world 
perhaps  will  never  see  again,  in  that  particular  mould  and 
manifestation.  Boundless  types  of  the  ridiculous,  they  con¬ 
trived  to  unite  a  temporary  intensity  of  life  and  power  with 
their  absurdities.  They  were  real  persons,  realities,  not  shams, 
writes  an  admirer.  They  were  realities,  beyond  a  doubt,  but 
in  a  sense  which  utterly  excludes  from  the  meaning  of  the 
word  “  reality  ”  the  sublime,  the  great,  or  the  interesting.  The 
animal  creation,  for  example,  with  all  its  ferocities  and  humours, 
is  real,  and  men  and  mammalia  are  both  real.  But  the  reality 
of  the  one  nature  is  human,  of  the  other — animal.  The  Puritans 
had  reality  ;  but  that  they  were  ridiculous  is  a  simple  fact,  of 
which  the  elemental  perception  of  that  principle  in  our  nature 
is  at  once  the  test.  They  abounded  and  sprung  up  with  a 
luxuriant  and  prolific  impetus  all  over  the  Church  now. 
Ordination  was  not  limited  then  by  its  present  rules.  Men 
were  ordained  with  or  without  cures.  Gentlemen  of  any  rank, 
who  chose  to  afford  one,  had  a  chaplain,  or  person  so  called,  in 
his  house.  “  All  persons/’  says  Heylin,  “  were  left  at  liberty 
to  keep  as  many  as  they  would,  and  as  long  as  they  pleased, 
without  any  control.  Nor  (when  this  liberty  was  restricted) 

M.E.-1.]  L 


1 62 


Archbishop  Land. 


were  the  chaplains  better  pleased  than  their  masters  were. 
For  having  lived  upon  hard  commons,  and  perhaps  under  some 
smart  discipline  in  their  halls  and  colleges,  they  thought 
they  had  spent  their  studies  to  good  purpose  by  finding- 
ease  and  a  full  belly  in  these  gentlemen’s  houses,  from 
whom  there  was  possibly  some  preferment  also.”  The  un¬ 
manageable  theological  mass  thus  sprung  up  had  found  their 
way  into  schools,  among  other  places,  and  their  notions  in¬ 
terfered  with  common  education.  And  Laud  complains  that 
“  the  precisian  would  read  nothing  but  divinity  to  his  pupils 
— no,  not  so  much  as  the  grammar  rules ;  unless  Mars  and 
Bacchus,  Apollo,  Pol,  and  iEdipol  were  blotted  out.” 

The  doctrine  of  the  school  was  strong  predestinarianism, 
and  they  stood  upon  the  language  of  the  seventeenth  Article, 
as  the  proof  that  the  Church  spoke  with  them.  The  fact  that 
the  seventeenth  Article  comes  almost  word  for  word  from  St. 
Augustine  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  that  neither  could 
well  be  Calvinists,  could  not  reach  congregations  who  knew 
nothing  of  the  history  of  doctrinal  language.  The  Calvinistic 
doctrine  of  predestination,  with  all  its  concomitant  views  of 
original  sin,  the  atonement,  and  justification  by  faith,  was  put 
forward  as  the  teaching  of  the  Reformed  Church.  There  is 
something  in  the  Calvinistic  predestinarian  or  fatalist  view 
which  wonderfully  harmonises  with  a  low  and  fallen  religion. 
It  has  been  the  favourite  article  of  heretical  bodies  from  the 
first.  It  benumbs  the  aspiring  will,  and  reduces  all  Christians 
to  a  level ;  stops  up  the  fountain-head  of  good  works,  excuses 
the  aim  at  graces  and  perfections,  and  insinuates  the  flattering 
belief  that  the  aim  is  even  sinful,  and  not  intended  in  God’s 
scheme.  It  supplants  humility,  the  very  basis  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  character ;  by  taking  away  the  real  reason  for  it,  voluntary 
sin,  it  makes  humility  unnecessary  and  out  of  place.  If  a 
man  could  not  help  doing  wrong,  why  be  humbled  for  it  ? 
Proud  nature  knows  that,  refuses  to  appropriate  its  sin,  and 
turns  fatalist.  “  I  had  rather,”  says  Augustine,  speaking  of 
himself,  in  his  Manichean  days,  “  that  Thy  incommutable  sub¬ 
stance  erred  by  necessity  than  my  own  mutable  one  by  will ; 
and  sin  was  derived  by  immutable  law  from  heaven,  that  man 


Archbishop  Laud. 


163 

might  he  free  from  it,  and  remain  proud  rottenness  and  flesh 
vand  blood/’  Man  tries  to  escape  from  the  fact  of  voluntary 
sin,  hut  the  Church  will  not  let  him.  She  pursues  him  with 
the  fact  of  his  free-will,  drives  him  into  a  corner,  and  points 
the  sharp  sword  at  his  conscience.  Free-will  is  the  one  sore 
point  with  sinful  nature ;  and  is  the  starting-point  of  a 
whole  different  religious  system  from  that  of  natural  man — 
the  spiritual  ethics  of  Catholicism. 

Calvinism  and  Arminianism  were  the  two  names  which  the 
Puritans  gave  to  the  two  sides  on  this  question.  The  advocates 
of  free-  will  were  called  Arminians,  though  they  disclaimed  and 
in  fact  had  nothing  to  do  with  Arminius  himself.  The  name 
was  given  them  by  their  opponents.  Laud’s  school  urged 
simply  the  Church  doctrine  of  free-will  against  the  Calvinistic 
view,  and  the  controversy  on  the  subject  of  free-will  and 
predestination  filled  the  Church,  became  the  great  doctrinal 
controversy  of  the  day,  and  was  carried  on  by  sermons  and 
hooks  and  pamphlets,  and  all  the  modes  of  agitation  common 
in  theological  war.  The  Puritan  was  Calvinist,  and  the  Church¬ 
man  Arminian.  There  were  exceptions  to  the  division  in  many 
cases,  such  as  Davenant  and  Usher,  who  held  a  certain  modifica¬ 
tion  of  Calvinism  in  doctrine,  while  they  were  Churchmen  in  dis¬ 
cipline.  But  the  two  sides,  as  a  whole,  divided  on  this  subject. 

Laud’s  object  was  a  doctrinal  clearance;  the  subjugation  of 
the  Calvinistic  spirit  in  the  Beformed  Church  of  England.  The 
restoration  of  Church  ceremonial  and  external  worship  was  not 
so  much  his  object  as  this  doctrinal  one.  The  Church  was 
overrun  with  heresy, for  we  cannot  call  the  Puritanical  movement 
of  the  seventeenth  century  by  any  other  name  ;  and  he  was  bent 
on  expelling  it,  on  the  view  that  nothing  could  be  made  of  the 
Church  till  it  was  got  rid  of.  He  was  a  doctrinal  reformer. 
Grievous  experience  had  taught  him  the  nature  of  the  Calvinistic 
school ;  and  he  had  suffered  under  the  pressure.  The  two  Abbots, 
and  Vice-Chancellor  Airay,  and  the  theological  tribunal,  and  the 
Oxford  contests  with  the  heads  of  the  party,  made  their  im¬ 
pression.  He  was  now  in  power,  and  it  was  his  turn  to  act. 

Laud  had  no  sooner  gained  his  position  in  the  Church  than 
two  successive  sets  of  royal  instructions  made  their  appearance, 


164 


Archbishop  Laud. 


laying  down  stringent  rules  for  curtailing  the  number  of 
lecturers,  and  cramping  their  pulpit  displays.  The  prolific 
source  of  the  class  was  stopped  up,  and  common  gentle¬ 
men  were  forbidden  private  chaplains  in  their  houses.  The 
lecturer  had  the  whole  ecclesiastical  weight  tied  to  him  from 
the  time  he  went  into  the  church  to  the  time  he  came  out.  The 
Church  service  before  the  lecture,  the  surplice,  the  communion 
service  from  the  altar  in  the  morning,  were  all  hung  like 
weights  upon  his  performance.  “  If  you  preach,  you  must 
pray/’  he  was  told.  He  found  himself  under  a  legal  ceremonial 
burden.  He  rushed  impetuously  into  the  extempore  prayer 
before  the  sermon,  and  the  bidding  prayer  instantly  filled  up 
the  gap.  The  sermon  itself  was  brought  into  confinement, 
and  barren  was  the  model  of  the  discourse  to  which  the  Puri¬ 
tan  imagination  was  directed.  The  injunctions  proceed : 
“  I.  That  no  preacher  under  the  degree  and  calling  of  a  bishop, 
or  dean  of  a  cathedral  or  collegiate  church  (and  they  upon  the 
King’s  days  only  and  set  festivals),  do  take  occasion,  by  the 
expounding  of  any  text  of  Scripture  whatever,  to  fall  into  any 
set  discourse  or  commonplace,  otherwise  than  by  opening  the 
coherence  and  division  of  his  text.  II.  That  no  parson,  vicar, 
curate,  or  lecturer,  shall  preach  any  sermon  or  collation  here¬ 
after  in  the  afternoon,  but  upon  some  parts  of  the  Catechism  or 
the  Lord’s  Prayer.  III.” — continues  the  document,  with  growing 
impetus  and  rising  displeasure,  as  it  approaches  the  great 
point, — “  That  no  preacher  of  what  title  whatsoever,  under  the 
degree  of  bishop  or  dean  at  the  least,  do  from  henceforth  pre¬ 
sume  to  preach  in  any  popular  auditory  the  deep  points  of 
predestination,  election,  reprobation,  or  of  the  universality, 
efficacity,  resistibility,  or  irresistibility  of  God’s  grace.”  The 
animus  of  the  document  could  have  been  given  in  two  words — 
no  sermons.  Sermons  were  the  unmanageable  articles,  the 
essential  agents  of  mischief ;  and  how  to  cut  and  pare  them 
down,  and  put  them  into  strait- waistcoats,  and  into  the  stocks, 
and  take  out  their  tongues,  and  make  them  say  nothing,  and 
mean  nothing,  and  be  nothing,  was  the  question. 

The  instructions,  of  course,  created  large  disgust.  Country 
gentlemen  thought  themselves  insulted.  It  was  rumoured  that 


Archbishop  Laud \ 


165 

"  nothing  less  was  aimed  at  than  a  total  suppression  of  the 
Divine  ordinance  of  preaching and  at  the  least,  “  a  dreadful 
diminution  in  the  number  of  sermons  was  anticipated  and 
“  as  for  spending  the  afternoon  in  teaching  the  Church  Cate¬ 
chism,”  the  preacher  felt  much  of  the  indescribable  contempt  for 
the  task  that  Dugald  Dalgetty  had  for  bows  and  arrows.  “  It 
was  a  work  fitter  for  a  pedagogue  than  a  preaching  minister, 
who  was  ordained  to  provide  strong  meats  for  men,  and  not 
such  milk  for  babes.”  It  was  a  strange  look-out,  indeed,  if  he 
who  had  dived  into  the  very  arcana  of  predestinarianism,  if  the 
advanced  Gospellist  was  now  to  expound  the  Catechism.  The 
execution  of  the  injunctions  led  to  fresh  collisions.  The 
preachers  did  expound  the  Catechism  ;  they  took  a  text  out  of 
it,  and  preached  a  full-length  sermon.  The  bishop  of  the 
diocese  had  to  keep  watch. 

The  royal  declaration  about  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  still 
appended  to  our  Prayer-Book,  was  the  decisive  step,  however, 
taken  with  respect  to  the  doctrinal  question  at  issue.  The 
meaning  of  the  Articles  was  fought  for ;  the  declaration  rescued 
them  vi  et  armis  from  the  Calvinistic  sense,  and  said  positively 
they  are  not  Calvinistic,  and  they  shall  not  he  Calvinistic  ;  we 
forbid  you  drawing  any  inference  of  your  own  from  them. 
You  shall  take  the  words — the  words  as  they  stand — as  much 
of  the  words  as  you  please — hut  not  one  iota  of  meaning  shall 
you  give  them.  It  is  no  use,  the  royal  document  seems  to  say, 
disputing  with  you ;  you  are  too  much  for  us  with  your 
indomitable  tongues ;  suffice  it  to  say  that  it  shall  be  so ; 
we  will  have  no  commenting.  “We  will  that  all  further 
curious  search  be  laid  aside.  Ho  man  hereafter  shall  draw 
the  Articles  aside  any  way.  Ho  man  shall  put  his  own 
sense  or  comment  to  be  the  meaning  of  the  Article,  but  shall 
take  it  in  the  literal  grammatical  sense.”  The  declaration 
was  perfectly  understood  by  the  Calvinists,  and  pronounced  to 
come  “  from  the  depths  of  Satan,”  and  to  be  “  a  Jesuitical  plan 
to  subvert  the  Gospel.”  Under  pretence  of  stopping  both 
sides,  it  tongue-tied  them.  Even  Bishop  Davenant  had  to  be 
called  to  order  for  disobedience ;  and  a  strong  Calvinistic  ser¬ 
mon  from  him  in  the  royal  chapel  the  Sunday  after  in  defiance 


1 66 


Archbishop  Laud. 


of  it  brought  him  before  the  High  Commission.  At  the  same 
time  the  wording  of  the  document  was  almost  too  impartial. 
The  Calvinistic  sense  was  destroyed,  but  all  other  senses  were 
stopped  at  the  same  time  too.  Ho  side  being  allowed  to  attach 
its  own  meaning  to  them,  all  meanings  were  taken  away,  and 
Calvinism  was  removed  by  a  process  which  cleared  the  whole 
ground  to  achieve  its  removal,  and  henceforth  a  grammatical 
sense,  without  a  theological  meaning,  was  the  subtle  abstraction 
to  which  the  significancy  of  the  Articles  was  reduced,  according 
to  this  declaration. 

Such  were  the  weapons  of  the  day.  There  is  something 
curious  in  a  contest  between  two  kinds  of  strength.  The 
naturalist  seeks  for  the  spectacle  in  the  animal  world ;  the 
historical  eye  sees  it  in  the  annals  of  parties  and  movements. 
Puritanism  felt  the  saliency  and  impetuosity  of  a  new  heretical 
principle,  Laud  the  pertinacity  of  an  old  ecclesiastical  one.  He 
had  not  the  young  power  of  the  age  with  him,  and  he  must  use 
what  power  he  had.  Puritanism  came  up,  like  the  seed  from 
the  dragon  s  teeth,  everywhere  ;  Laud  could  simply  put  his  foot 
on  it.  It  turned,  and  doubled,  and  fled  from  him,  in  Protean 
fashion,  and  he  followed  it.  It  evaded  one  law,  and  another 
was  made.  He  kept  it  under,  while  its  prolific  vitality 
threatened  to  burst  the  pressure  every  moment  and  overwhelm 
him.  Keep  it  under,  check,  block  it,  was  all  he  could  do,  and 
that  he  did  do  without  fail.  Bold  impetus  found  its  match, 
and  the  coarse  vigour  and  teeming  animal  life  of  heresy  never 
made  the  coercer  shrink  or  flag. 

The  contest  of  the  two  sides  for  Church  patronage  was 
another  form  of  the  same  combat.  The  matter  was  one  of  vital 
importance,  and  affected  the  prospective  strength  of  each  party 
strongly.  The  Puritans  had  their  project — a  great  scheme,  viz. 
for  buying  in  lay  impropriations.  A  common  fund  was  raised 
for  buying  in  such  impropriations  as  were  in  lay  hands,  and  a 
regular  corporation  formed.  “  Twelve  persons,  clergymen, 
citizens,  and  lawyers — their  names,  Googe,  Offspring,  Sibbs,  and 
Davenport,  ministers ;  Eyre,  Brown,  White,  and  Sherland, 
lawyers  ;  Gearing,  Davis,  Horwood,  and  Bridges,  citizens  ;  with 
Rowland  Heylin,  alderman  of  London,  a  thirteenth  man,  to  give 


Archbishop  Laud. 


167 


the  casting  vote  ” — formed  the  committee  of  management. 
Emissaries  were  despatched  through  all  parts  of  the  country  to 
collect  money.  Heylin,  our  biographer,  first  discovered  the  real 
drift  of  the  design,  which  one  or  two  discourses  of  the  nominees 
of  the  body  sufficiently  demonstrated.  “  It  then  pleased  the 
president  of  his  college,  being  then  vice-chancellor,  to  appoint 
him  to  preach  the  Advent  sermon  at  St.  Mary’s,”  to  which,  it 
appears,  there  was  a  great  concourse  in  those  days.  He  took 
for  his  text,  “  But  while  men  slept,  the  enemy  came  and  sowed 
tares  among  the  wheat,  and  went  his  way ;  ”  and  an  expose,  of 
the  plan  followed.  “  A  general  consternation,”  he  says,  “  showed 
itself  in  the  looks  of  his  auditors,” — the  Puritan  portion  of  them. 
He  was  charged  with  having  been  set  upon  the  task  by  “  a 
higher  power and  “  honest,  well-meaning  men  thought  it  a 
pity  to  discourage  such  a  pious  work  ”  as  the  feoffment.  A 
Puritan  meeting  was  held  that  night,  and  came  to  the  resolu¬ 
tion  of  taking  legal  and  all  other  proceedings  against  the 
preacher.  Heylin  put  his  sermon  and  the  whole  affair  in 
Laud’s  hands,  “  who  thereupon  entered  it  in  the  memorandum 
at  the  end  of  his  Breviate, — viz.  ‘  to  overthrow  the  feoffment, 
dangerous  both  to  Church  and  State,  going  under  the  specious 
practice  of  buying  in  impropriations.’  ”  “  The  feoffees  came  to 

their  doom  in  the  Exchequer  ”  in  the  course  of  a  few  months. 

Laud  had  his  own  schemes,  in  the  meantime,  going  on  for 
the  same  object.  The  same  impropriations  were  in  his  eye 
too ;  and  at  the  very  time  of  this  discovery  he  was  holding 
consultations  with  Charles  about  a  method  of  getting  hack 
the  lay  patronage  within  the  Church  into  the  Church’s  hands 
again.  All  openings  to  patronage  were  watched.  Cottington, 
the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  and  Coventry,  the  Privy  Seal, 
had  a  dispute  “  about  the  disposal  of  such  benefices  as  belonged 
to  the  King  in  the  minority  of  his  wards.”  Coventry  claimed 
his  share,  Cottington  would  not  let  him  have  it.  While  the 
two  are  fighting,  “  Laud  ends  the  difference  by  taking  all  unto 
himself.”  He  urged  upon  his  Majesty  “  that  many  had 
served  as  chaplains  in  his  Majesty’s  ships,  who  should  have 
some  reward  given  them  for  their  services  past.  It  was  cold 
venturing  upon  such  hot  services  without  some  hope  of  reward. 


1 68 


Archbishop  Laud. 


He  takes  occasion,  therefore,  to  inform  his  Majesty,  that  till 
this  controversy  be  decided,  he  might  do  well  to  take  these 
livings  unto  his  own  disposal.  Which  proposition  being 
approved,  his  Majesty  committed  the  said  benefices  unto  his 
(the  Archbishop’s)  disposal.”  The  acquisition  was  gained 
without  much  ill-will,  for  “  Cottington  was  not  at  all  displeased 
at  the  designation — as  being  more  willing  that  a  third  man 
should  carry  off  the  prize  from  both,  than  to  be  overtopped  in 
his  own  jurisdiction.  And  the  Archbishop  by  this  accession 
of  power,  as  he  increased  the  number  of  his  dependants,  so 
gained  the  opportunity  of  supplying  the  Church  with  regular 
conformable  men ;  which  served  him  for  a  counterbalance 
against  the  multitude  of  lecturers  established  in  so  many  places, 
especially  by  the  feoffees  for  impropriations.” 

The  higher  preferments  of  the  Church  began  now  to  fall  into 
his  hands,  and  he  filled  them  up  with  his  own  men.  Corbet, 
“  one  of  his  fellow-sufferers  in  the  University,”  he  raised  to  the 
see  of  Norwich  ;  the  younger  Bancroft  to  the  see  of  Oxford  ; 
Neile,  from  Winchester  to  the  Archbishopric  of  York  ;  Juxon, 
to  the  clerkship  of  the  closet ;  Lyndsell,  to  Peterborough  ;  Wren, 
in  course  of  time,  to  Hereford.  A  catena  of  such  preferments 
was  brought  up  against  Laud  at  his  trial. 

We  come  to  another  great  department  of  reform.  A 
miserable  neglect  of  the  externals  of  worship,  and  an  aspect  of 
coldness,  irreverence,  and  disorder,  were  now  disgracing  the 
celebration  of  the  Church  services,  and  deforming  the  fabrics. 
Churches,  with  their  communion-tables  drawn  out  towards 
the  body  of  the  church,  the  chancels  becoming  rapidly  shut 
up  with  pews,  the  decay  of  all  ornament,  and  the  positive 
dirt  and  defilement  in  them,  were  made  into  conventicles  rather 
than  churches.  Laud  took  the  work  fairly  in  hand.  Some 
cathedrals  and  churches,  in  different  parts,  where  he  had 
influence,  had  already  begun  a  reform ;  and  the  cathedrals  of 
Gloucester,  St.  Paul’s,  and  Worcester  under  Main  waring,  and 
others,  had  revived  in  part  their  ancient  splendour,  and  the 
forms  and  outward  gestures  of  Catholic  worship.  Hangings, 
palls,  fronts,  and  rich  plate  vessels  enriched  the  altar.  The 
canons  bowed  towards  the  altar,  and  bowed  at  the  name  of 


A  rch  Irish  op  La  ud. 


1 6  9 


Jesus.  At  St.  Mary’s  Church,  Oxford,  the  doctors  and  scholars 
began  to  do  the  same ;  and  college  chapels  began  to  show  the 
rising  spirit. 

Land  had  a  great  taste  for  Church  ceremonial,  and  his  feeling 
was  in  the  movement.  The  combination  of  the  man  of  business 
and  statesman,  the  practical  character  with  the  love  of  Church 
ritual,  is  striking.  We  draw  aside  the  veil  of  political  life,  and 
find  the  Archbishop  before  his  chapel-altar,  consecrating  his 
communion- plate.  A  person, — an  informer  afterwards  against 
him, — happens  to  stray  into  the  chapel  at  Lambeth  one  morning, 
and  “  sees  him  bow  and  wear  a  cope,  then  consecrate  the  vessels, 
and  use  part  of  Solomon’s  dedication  prayer.”  “  No  fault,”  says 
Laud  at  his  trial,  “  in  any  of  these ;  these  inanimate  things 
are  holy,  in  that  they  are  deputed  to  the  service  of  God  :  there 
is  an  absolute  holiness  of  God  and  a  relative  holiness  of  the 
creature.”  “  If  there  is  no  dedication  of  these  things  to  God, 
there’s  neither  thing  nor  place  holy,  and  thus  no  sacrilege  :  no 
difference  between  churches  and  common  houses,  between 
‘holy  tables’  and  ordinary  tables.  But  I  would  have  no  man 
deceive  himself :  sacrilege  is  a  grievous  thing.  ‘  Thou  that 
abliorrest  idols,  dost  thou  commit  sacrilege  ?  ’  ”  The  whole 
turn  and  expression  of  his  mind,  and  his  zeal  on  the  subject, 
show  more  underneath  these  measures  than  the  cold  ground 
of  mere  external  decency  and  Church  respectability.  Certain 
forms  of  speaking  which  he  and  his  school  made  use  of 
are  indeed  open  to  this  interpretation.  But  it  should  be 
remembered  that  the  public  and  forensic  ground  is  not 
necessarily  the  real  ground  in  the  individual  himself.  When 
Laud  summoned  nonconformists  into  his  court  for  not  attend¬ 
ing  to  Church  ceremonial,  he  would  not  argue  with  them 
on  its  beauty  or  sublimity ;  he  would  simply  say,  This  is  the 
rule  of  the  Church,  and  you  must  obey  it.  Because  however 
he  makes  use  of  an  inferior  forensic  ground,  we  need  not  there¬ 
fore  tie  him  to  it  exclusively.  It  may  perfectly  co-exist  with 
the  higher  one ;  and  his  language  and  acts  show  this  higher 
ground  decidedly. 

The  restoration  of  the  ceremony  of  church  consecrations 
was  one  of  Laud’s  revivals.  The  ceremony  had  stopped  since 


Archbishop  Lazid. 


i  70 

the  Reformation ;  and  the  regular  view  was,  says  Heylin, 
“  that  the  continued  series  of  Divine  duties  in  a  place  set  apart 
for  that  purpose  doth  sufficiently  consecrate  a  place.”  "  In 
Sidney  College,  Cambridge,”  he  adds,  “  the  old  dormitory  of  the 
Franciscans  (on  the  site  of  which  friary  the  said  college  was 
built),  was,  after  some  years,  trimmed  and  fitted,  and  without 
any  formal  consecration  converted  into  a  house  of  prayer ; 
though  formerly,  in  the  opinion  of  those  who  allowed  thereof, 
it  could  have  been  no  better  than  a  den  of  thieves.”  “  The 
chapel  of  Emmanuel  College,  though  built  at  the  same  time 
with  the  rest  of  the  house,  was  never  consecrated.”  Laud’s 
consecrations  of  St.  Catherine  Creed  and  St.  Giles’s- in-the- 
Fields,  performed  with  high  formality  and  pomp,  revived  the 
old  idea  which  had  lain  dead,  and  made  a  sensation  which  gave 
a  stimulus  to  the  Church.  She  heard  herself  addressed  in 
sublime  tones  which  were  new  to  her,  and  learned  to  apply 
high  language  to  herself.  “  Lift  up  your  heads,  0  ye  gates, 
and  be  ye  lift  up,  ye  everlasting  doors,  and  the  King  of  Glory 
shall  come  in.” 

But  Laud’s  whole  movement  about  Church  externals  soon 
converged  to  a  point,  and  gathered  round  the  altar.  “  The 
altar,”  were  his  words,  “  is  the  greatest  place  of  God’s  residence 
upon  earth,  greater  than  the  pulpit,  for  there  ’tis  Hoc  est  corpus 
mcum ,  This  is  my  body ;  but  in  the  other  it  is,  at  most,  but 
Hoc  est  verbum  mcum ,  This  is  my  word.”  Here  the  cere¬ 
monial  question  became  a  doctrinal  one.  The  disposition  of 
the  communion-table  in  our  churches,  then  removed  from  the 
east  end,  and  brought  without  rails  or  screen  into  an  almost 
congregational  position  in  the  church,  was  an  ocular  contradic¬ 
tion  to  all  high  doctrine  on  the  subject  of  the  Eucharist ;  a 
practical  denial  of  the  mystery  of  the  Real  Presence  and  the 
Sacrifice.  It  was  a  bar  to  all  sound  preaching  on  that  head,  to 
have  the  whole  interior  of  a  church  giving  the  lie  to  the  doctrine. 
The  communion-table  was  used  for  all  sorts  of  purposes. 
“  Churchwardens  kept  their  accounts  upon  it ;  parishioners 
despatched  parish  business  at  it ;  schoolmasters  taught  the  boys 
to  write  at  it  ;  boys  had  their  hats,  satchels,  and  books  upon  it ; 
men  sat  and  leant  irreverently  against  it  at  sermon-time ; 


/ 


Archbishop  Laud. 


1 71 


glaziers  knocked  it  full  of  nail-holes.”  Land  applied  his 
attentions  to  the  holy  table,  made  that  his  object,  and  directed 
his  reforms  to  it.  He  wished  to  do  one  particular  thing — to 
bring  out  fairly,  and  put  in  its  proper  position,  the  Lord’s  table;  to 
raise  it  from  a  table  into  an  altar.  It  was  a  great  point  to  obtain, 
and  quite  worth  setting  to  work  about ;  he  applied  himself 
singly  and  vigorously  to  it.  In  gaining  this  he  gained  a  centre, 
about  which  a  hundred  other  things  were  collected. 

His  injunctions  about  the  communion-table  were  very 
simple,  and  even  moderate,  and  confined  themselves  to  this 
one  object.  They  enjoined  placing  the  communion-table  at 
the  east  end,  close  to  the  wall ;  rails  were  enjoined  to  separate 
it  fairly  from  the  congregation  ;  it  was  to  be  three  steps  above 
the  chancel  floor,  and  pews  in  the  chancel  that  obstructed  the 
sight  of  it  from  the  body  of  the  church  were  to  be  pulled 
down.  This  was  enough  to  vindicate  the  essential  character  of 
the  holy  table,  and  here  the  command  stopped.  Principle  and 
not  ornament  was  the  object.  In  cathedrals  and  places  where 
ornament  could  be  got  and  could  be  afforded,  it  was  attended 
to.  The  scene  of  a  magnificent  church  interior  required  it,  in 
order  to  keep  the  altar  on  a  par  with  the  rest  of  the  fabric. 
But  in  ordinary  cases  the  simple  naked  change  of  position 
was  all  aimed  at,  and  for  the  rest  he  was  content  with  neces¬ 
sary  decency.  We  must  confess  we  are  literally  unable  to 
discover  that  exorbitance  in  Laud’s  line  about  Church  externals 
that  some  have  affected  to  find.  His  injunctions  have  a  very 
moderate  tone,  aim  at  realities,  and  keep  to  the  point. 

An  order  in  Council,  dated  Whitehall,  November  3,  1633, 
settled  the  question  for  him,  in  the  case  of  St.  Gregory’s  Church, 
near  St.  Paul’s,  in  the  City,  where  the  change  of  position  had 
been  made.  The  decision  made  a  noise  at  the  time,  and  gave 
him  the  ground  he  wanted.  An  archiepiscopal  visitation, 
commenced  immediately  after  his  elevation,  enforced  a  set  of 
instructions  on  the  subject,  and  Brent,  the  vicar-general,  made 
'  a  progress  through  the  provinces.  He  did  not  encounter  more 
opposition  than  that  of  churchwardens  here  and  there,  till  he 
came  to  the  diocese  of  Lincoln. 

Here  the  old  enemy,  Williams,  was  on  the  alert.  As  soon 


Archbishop  Land. 


i  72 

as  ever  the  order  of  St.  Gregory  appeared,  he  turned  the 
communion-tables  in  his  diocese  that  happened  to  be  at  the 
east  end,  back  again,  raised  a  cry  of  “  more  capacity  to  receive 
communicants,  greater  audibleness  of  the  minister’s  voice,”  etc., 
and  received  Laud  with  a  regular  organised  opposition.  He 
ingratiated  himself  forthwith,  in  a  marked  way,  and  with  all 
the  arts  of  humbug,  of  which  he  was  master,  with  the  noncon¬ 
formist  ministers — “  insomuch  that,  meeting  in  the  Arch¬ 
deaconry  of  Buckingham  with  one  Dr.  Bret,  a  very  grave  and 
reverend  man,  but  one  who  was  supposed  to  incline  that  way, 
he  embraced  him  in  his  episcopal  arms,  with  these  words  of  St. 
Augustine,  Quamvis  Episcojpus  major  est  presbytero ,  Augustinus 
tamen  minor  est  Hieronymo ;  intimating  thereby,  to  the  great 
commendation  of  his  modesty,  among  those  of  that  faction, 
that  Bret  was  as  much  greater  than  Williams  as  the  bishop  was 
above  a  priest.”  The  vicar- general  began  with  laying  his  sus¬ 
pension  upon  the  bishop  and  all  his  six  archdeacons.  Williams 
pleaded  an  exemption  from  the  visitorial  power  by  virtue 
of  certain  Papal  Bulls.  The  question  was  tried  before 
Council,  and  decided  against  him ;  and  the  vicar -general  then 
went  through  the  diocese.  As  soon  as  his  back  was  turned, 
Williams  began  a  counter  visitation,  and  not  daring  to  disobey 
the  whole  injunction,  adopted  the  rails  without  the  position, 
and  railed  the  holy  table  round  in  the  middle  of  the  chancel. 

Williams,  disgraced  at  Court,  had  retired  to  his  diocese  some 
years  before ;  “  having  given  up  the  seal,”  says  Heylin,  “  but 
supposed  to  have  taken  the  purse  with  him.”  He  lived  in 
great  style  in  his  see,  and  nobody  knew  where  his  money 
came  from.  Laud  soon  found  him,  however,  doing  as  much 
mischief  in  the  country  as  he  did  at  Court.  He  set  up  as 
patron  of  the  Puritans,  had  before  now  come  out  in  print  as  an 
antagonist  on  the  communion-table  question,  and  was  a  rising 
centre  of  Church  disaffection  in  the  country.  “  He  used  all 
the  wit  and  malice  he  could,”  says  Clarendon,  “  to  awake  the 
people  to  a  jealousy  of  these  innovations.”-  It  was  simple  pure 
political  malice  in  him ;  about  the  question  itself  he  did  not 
care  a  straw.  He  actually  had  a  highly  ornamented  altar  in 
his  own  private  chapel  and  cathedral.  Laud  tried  hard  and 


Archbishop  Laud. 


173 

long  unsuccessfully  to  oust  him  out  of  his  see.  Williams  laid 
himself  open  by  some  betrayal  of  Council  secrets  to  his  Puritan 
friends.  He  was  instantly  brought  before  the  Star-Chamber, 
but  by  delays  and  technicalities  kept  the  court  at  bay  for  a 
period  of  ten  years.  Strafford,  to  oblige  Laud,  tried  his  hand 
at  him,  but  found  it  easier  to  master  Ireland  than  to  get  the 
upper  hand  of  Williams.  He  was  obliged  to  leave  hold  of  him 
and  go  to  his  Irish  government.  In  1637  Williams  at  last 
received  his  sentence,  was  suspended,  and  put  in  prison.  He 
supplicated  hard  for  pardon,  and  offered  to  give  up  his  bishopric 
altogether.  He  was  offered  an  Irish  one,  as,  under  Strafford,  a 
safe  place  to  keep  him  in.  The  offer  was  declined.  “  He  did 
not  like  to  go  where  he  should  fall  into  the  hands  of  a  man  who 
once  in  seven  months  would  find  out  some  old  statute  or  other 
for  cutting  off  his  head.”  He  continued  in  the  Tower  for  three 
years,  “  during  which  time  he  never  went  into  the  chapel  of  the 
Tower  to  attend  Divine  service,  or  hear  the  sermon,  or  receive 
the  sacrament.” 

The  great  religious  contest  had,  meantime,  its  offshoots. 
The  Sabbatarian  question  was  one.  The  Church  had  taken  one 
view  of  the  Sunday  from  the  first  ages ;  Puritanism  had  pro¬ 
mulgated  another  :  the  one  made  it  a  Church  feast ;  the  other 
a  Judaical  fast.  A  good  deal  was  involved  in  the  distinction. 
A  whole  Church  halo  gathers  round  the  ecclesiastical  Sunday ; 
it  appeals  for  the  original  choice  of  the  day  itself  to  the  Church ; 
it  represents  the  Church  system  and  round  of  fast  and  festival, 
and  typifies  the  high  chastised  spiritual  joy  of  Catholicism. 
Puritanism  feels  itself  excluded,  and  rejects  the  ecclesiastical 
festival.  There  is  a  spirit  in  the  Church  Sunday  that  particu¬ 
larly  harmonises  with  Church  feeling,  and  a  spirit  in  the  Puri¬ 
tan  Sabbath  that  particularly  harmonises  with  Puritanism.  The 
consecration  of  joy  by  Church  sanctions,  Church  times  and 
seasons,  and  the  being  under  obligation,  as  it  were,  to  the 
Church  for  your  mirth,  is  a  true  part  of  Catholic  feeling,  and 
particularly  not  of  Puritan. 

The  question  came  out  now  in  the  dress  of  the  day.  Tn 
1618,  King  James,  on  his  return  from  his  Scotch  progress, 
issued  the  first  “  Book  of  Sports.”  His  motive  was,  his  royal 


174 


Archbishop  Laud. 


compassion  for  the  melancholy  dulness  of  the  poor  population 
on  the  Sunday.  He  lifted  up  his  royal  eyes,  as  he  returned 
through  Yorkshire  and  Lancashire,  and  saw  everything  look 
dull  on  the  Sunday.  He  thought  the  Church  of  England  had 
a  very  forbidding  aspect  to  the  numerous  Eoman  Catholics  of 
those  districts.  The  Church  was  injured,  and  the  poor  were 
deprived  of  their  proper  holiday.  He  issued  a  book  of  rules  for 
Sunday  amusements  and  festivities.  The  rules  prescribed 
innocent  merry  games  and  exercises,  and  aimed,  with  a  good 
spirit  and  intention,  at  providing  the  poor  with  proper  recrea¬ 
tion,  while  it  at  the  same  time  prevented  them  from  running 
into  extravagance  or  brutality.  They  were  to  play,  they  were 
to  go  to  church  too.  “Eor  his  good  people’s  lawful  recreation, 
his  Majesty’s  pleasure  was,  that,  after  the  end  of  Divine  service, 
his  good  people  be  not  disturbed,  letted,  or  discouraged  from 
any  lawful  recreation,  such  as  dancing,  either  men  or  women  ; 
archery  for  men,  leaping,  vaulting,  or  any  other  such  harmless 
recreation ;  nor  from  having  of  May-games,  Whitsun-ales, 
morice-dances,  and  the  setting  up  of  May-poles,  or  other 
sports,  therewith  used ;  so  that  the  same  be  had  in  due  and 
convenient  time,  without  impediment  or  neglect  of  Divine 
service.  And  that  women  shall  have  leave  to  carry  rushes 
into  the  church,  for  the  decorating  of  it  according  to  their  old 
custom.  But  withal,  his  Majesty  doth  here  account  still  as  pro¬ 
hibited  all  unlawful  games,  as  bear  and  bull  baitings,  etc.  etc. 
All  offensive  weapons  are  prohibited  to  be  carried  or  used  in 
the  said  times  of  recreation.  And  the  present  recreations  are 
forbidden  to  any  who,  though  conform  in  religion,  are  not 
present  in  the  church  at  the  service  of  God,  before  going  to 
the  said  recreations.”  The  attempt  was  a  good  one,  and  was 
likely  to  have  considerable  effect  on  the  poor,  in  the  way 
of  attaching  them  to  the  Church.  The  clergy  argued,  “  that 
they  preserved  the  memorial  of  the  dedication  of  the  several 
churches,  composed  differences  by  mediation  and  meeting  of 
friends,  increased  love  and  amity  by  feasts  of  charity,  and  the 
relief  and  comfort  of  the  poor,  by  opening  the  rich  men’s 
houses.” 

A  great  set  was  made  at  these  games  from  high  and  low 


Archbishop  Laud.  . 


175 


Puritan  quarters.  Besides  tire  ordinary  attacks  from  the 
Puritan  press,  judges  and  magisterial  and  corporation  benches 
assumed  a  precisian  look,  and  were  shocked.  Puritanism 
had  a  certain  magnetic  influence  throughout  these  times  over 
some  opulent  official  classes  in  the  country.  The  municipal 
authorities,  and  magistrates  in  high-backed  chairs,  exhibited 
the  school  in  its  decent,  comfortable,  and  respectable  form. 
The  respectable  Puritan  country  gentleman  saw  from  the 
windows  of  his  mansion  the  poor  people  enjoying  themselves, 
in  their  rough  way,  and  saw  them,  very  likely,  sometimes  go 
too  far.  The  respectable  Puritan  gentleman  was  annoyed  ; 
the  Somersetshire,  Dorsetshire,  Devonshire  magistracy,  were 
of  opinion  that  these  “  feast-days,  church-ales,  wakes,  and 
revels,”  did  the  people  harm,  and  interfered  with  order  and 
gravity,  made  a  disagreeable  noise,  and  disturbed  their  own 
respectable  after-dinner  repose.  Chief  Baron  Walter  and 
Baron  Denham  issued  their  orders  at  the  Devonshire  assizes 
for  the  suppression  of  all  “revels,  church- ales,  clerk-ales,”  and 
the  like.  The  course  of  suppression  went  on,  and  Puritan 
authorities  were  gradually  putting  down  the  Church  feasts. 

Chief-Justice  Eichardson  went  down  to  the  Somersetshire 
assizes  with  judges’  orders  to  this  effect  in  his  pocket,  which  he 
issued,  backed  by  the  grand  jury ;  and  with  them  an  injunc¬ 
tion  to  all  the  clergy  of  the  county  to  publish  them  in  their 
churches,  and  see  them  put  into  effect.  Laud  now  stepped  in. 
He  summoned  Eichardson  to  answer  for  “  an  encroachment 
upon  the  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction,  in  imposing  upon  men  in 
holy  orders  the  publishing  of  warrants  and  commands  from  the 
secular  judges.”  The  King  commanded  Eichardson  to  revoke 
the  order.  Eichardson  disobeyed,  and  reissued  it  in  a  more 
peremptory  form  than  before  :  complaints  came  up  from  the 
county ;  and  the  bishop,  with  seventy-two  of  his  clergy, 
certified,  “under  their  signs-manual,  that  on  the  feast-days 
(wakes),  (which  commonly  fell  on  the  Sunday),  the  service  of 
God  was  more  soberly  performed,  and  the  Church  better 
frequented,  both  forenoon  and  afternoon,  than  upon  any 
Sunday  in  the  year  ;  and  that  the  people  desired  the  continuance 
of  them.”  Eichardson  was  cited  again  to  the  Council- table, 


176 


Archbishop  Laud. 


and  Laud  gave  him  a  lecture,  which  effectually  silenced  him. 
He  came  out  of  the  Council-room  in  tears,  and  perfectly  over¬ 
whelmed — “  choked,”  he  declared,  “  with  a  pair  of  lawn 
sleeves.”  The  London  civic  authorities  displayed  the  same 
pompous  scrupulosity ;  and  Lord  Mayors  Dunbar  and 
Eaynton  were  the  terror  of  the  London  inferior  population  on 
the  Sunday.  Self-complacent  zeal  is  provocative  of  a  set-down. 
An  old  apple-woman  triumphed  over  their  Lordships  :  the  civic 
officers  had  assaulted  her  upon  Church  ground,  and  shoved  her 
out  of  St.  Paul’s  churchyard.  Laud  rebuked  the  Lord  Mayor 
for  his  pains,  and  told  him  to  keep  upon  his  own  territory. 

There  was  a  class,  it  is  not  to  be  denied,  that  Laud  rather 
liked  setting  down.  Self-important  official  men  were  highly 
obnoxious  to  snubs  from  him.  He  had  something  of  a  relish 
for  the  process.  When  any  one  particularly  catches  it,  it  is  a 
great  chance  if  he  is  not  a  person  of  dignity  ;  some  gentleman 
who  had  probably  never  had  his  set-down  before,  and  who, 
upon  the  ordinary  equilibrium  of  nature,  must  be  supposed  to 
have  rather  wanted  it.  His  spirit  insensibly  rose  when  one  of 
these  gentlemen  made  his  appearance  :  and  the  “  big  ”  man 
had  his  lesson  which  a  little  man  escaped.  The  Council-room 
exhibited  a  curious  mixture  often  on  this  head.  Some  poor 
insignificant  man  or  other  has  the  whole  room  arguing  with 
him,  trying  to  persuade  him  out  of  his  error,  and  treating  him 
with  really  flattering  attention.  “  One  Brabourn,  a  poor 
schoolmaster  in  the  diocese  of  Norfolk,”  is  converted  by  the 
affability  of  the  Council.  He  had  written  on  the  Sabbatarian 
side,  and  been  audacious  enough  to  dedicate  his  book  to  his 
Majesty  :  “  Brabourn  being  therefore  called  into  court,  his 
error  was  so  learnedly  confuted  by  the  bishops  and  other 
judicious  divines  then  present,  that  he  began  to  stagger  in  his 
opinion.”  Their  Lordships  following  up  the  argumentative 
victory,  “  admonished  him  in  a  grave  and  fatherly  way  to  sub¬ 
mit  himself  to  a  conference  with  such  grave  and  learned  men 
as  should  be  appointed  thereunto  :  to  which  he  cheerfully  con¬ 
sented,  and  found  such  benefit  of  that  meeting,  that,  by  God’s 
blessing,  he  became  a  convert  to  the  orthodoxal  doctrine  of  the 
Church  of  England  concerning  the  Sabbath,  or  Lord’s  day.” 


Archbishop  Laud . 


1 77 


The  fiscal  and  economical  department  of  the  Church  came 
under  Land’s  eye,  as  well  as  the  doctrinal  and  ceremonial.  It 
wanted  looking  after  not  a  little.  “  He  saw  the  Church  was 
decaying,”  says  Heylin,  “  both  in  power  and  patrimony  :  her 
patrimony  dilapidated  by  the  avarice  of  several  bishops,  in 
making  havoc  of  the  woods  to  enrich  themselves  ;  and  more 
often  so  in  making  up  their  grants  and  leases  to  the  utmost 
term,  after  they  had  been  nominated  to  some  other  bishopric, 
to  the  great  wrong  of  their  successors.  Her  power  he  found 
diminished,  partly  by  the  bishops  themselves,  in  leaving  their 
dioceses  unregarded,  and  living  together  about  Westminster, 
to  be  in  a  more  ready  way  for  the  next  preferment.”  It  is  not, 
we  believe,  saying  anything  needlessly  severe  of  the  class  of 
bishops  the  Eeformation  had  put  into  the  English  sees,  that 
whether  or  not  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  may  have  been 
benefited  by  them,  they  certainly  did  not  benefit  her  property. 
A  great  number  were  systematic  depredators.  The  system 
went  on  regularly  in  Laud’s  time  :  the  bishops  lived  in  London 
and  sucked  the  Church  lands  dry.  Indulgent  kindness  to  his 
own  order  was  no  failing  of  Laud’s.  While  the  bishops  were 
living  comfortably  round  their  London  focus,  a  sudden  royal 
decree  came  out,  worded  in  an  extremely  business-like  style, 
exactly  to  the  purpose  :  “  Charles  Eex.  I.  That  the  Lords  the 
Bishops  be  commanded  to  their  several  sees,  there  to  keep  resid¬ 
ence  ;  excepting  those  which  are  in  necessary  attendance  at 
Court.”  The  document  proceeded  to  other  items  in  the  way  of 
business — no  reflection  intended  :  “  II.  That  none  of  them 
reside  upon  his  land  or  lease  that  he  hath  purchased,  nor  in  his 
town  residence,  if  he  hold  any,  but  in  one  of  his  episcopal 
houses — and  that  he  waste  not  the  woods  thereof .”  And  after 
going  through  a  series  of  points  which  they  were  to  attend  to 
in  their  dioceses,  it  winds  up  with  a  recurrence  to  the  subject 
of  estates  and  woods  :  “  IX.  That  no  bishop  shall,  from  the 
day  of  his  nomination  (to  another  see),  presume  to  make  any 
lease  for  three  lives,  or  one-and-twenty  years,  or  current  lease, 
or  any  other  way  renew  any  estate,  or  cut  any  wood  or  timber, 
but  merely  to  receive  the  rents  due,  and  then  quit  the  place. 
F or  we  think  it  hateful  that  any  man’s  leaving  his  bishopric 

M.E.-1.]  m 


A rchbishop  Laud. 


178 

should  almost  undo  his  successor.”  The  effect  of  this  order 
was  to  scatter  the  episcopal  nucleus  at  Westminster  forthwith, 
and  send  their  reluctant  and  grumbling  lordships  down  to 
diocesan  exile.  “  The  poorer  bishops,”  says  Heylin,  “  were  as 
much  troubled  as  the  others,  and  thought  it  the  worst  kind 
of  banishment  to  be  confined  into  the  country  ;  complaining 
privately  that  now  the  Court  bishops  had  served  their  own 
turns  upon  the  King,  they  cared  not  what  miseries  their  poor 
brethren  were  exposed  to.”  The  order  respecting  the  woods 
and  leases  was  no  more  popular  with  them,  and  they  thought  it 
very  unfair  “that  they  could  not  make  the  best  of  their  time,  but 
were  required  to  be  good  husbands  for  another  man,  who  was 
to  enjoy  the  place  when  they  were  to  leave.” 

The  deans  and  chapters  do  not  get  off  any  better.  Infor¬ 
mation  comes  to  Laud  (he  is  always  receiving  information  of 
one  sort  or  other)  “  that  the  deans  and  prebends  of  such  and 
such  churches  had  enriched  themselves,  their  wives  and  chil¬ 
dren,  by  taking  great  fines  for  turning  leases  of  twenty-one 
years  into  leases  for  lives,  leaving  their  successors  destitute,” 
as  well  as  depriving  the  Church  of  a  hold  over  a  numerous 
class  of  gentry  and  yeomanry,  occupiers  of  the  lands, — “  All 
which  his  Majesty,  taking  into  his  princely  consideration, 
caused  letters  under  the  royal  signature  to  be  sent  to  all  the 
deans  and  chapters  of  this  kingdom  respectively,  calling  and 
commanding  them,  upon  pain  of  his  utmost  displeasure,  that 
they  presumed  not  to  let  any  lease  belonging  to  their  church 
into  lives.”  And  “whereas  some  deans  of  cathedrals  are  cor¬ 
porations  of  themselves,  no  dean  is  to  presume  from  henceforth 
(after  his  being  translated)  to  renew  any  lease  either  unto  lives 
or  years :  his  Majesty  having  well  observed  that  at  such 
times  of  remove  many  men  care  not  what  or  how  they  let 
their  estates,  to  the  prejudice  of  the  Church  and  their  succes¬ 
sors.”  The  royal  experience  is  certainly  not  complimentary 
to  the  morals  of  the  Church  dignitaries  of  that  period.  Laud 
was  a  remorseless  pursuer  of  jobbers — Church  jobbers  espe¬ 
cially.  It  is  part  of  the  disinterested  public  man’s  nature  and 
instinct,  which  was  strong  in  him.  He  brought  them  out  of 
their  holes  with  remarkable  sang  froid,  bishops  and  arch- 


Archbishop  Laud. 


!/ 9 


bishops,  deans  and  canons  and  all.  The  exceedingly  small 
respect  which  these  distinguished  officials  meet  with  under 
such  circumstances  is  almost  entertaining.  Practice  soon 
becomes  familiar,  and  England  and  Ireland  were  full  of  the 
game.  In  Ireland  all  attempt  at  appearances  is  given  up 
under  the  pressing  emergency,  and  the  pursuit  becomes  a 
perfect  halloo  and  field-day  after  these  offenders.  They  are 
caught  like  so  many  animals.  Strafford  has  to  “  trounce  ” 
them,  to  chastise  them,  “  warm  them  75  in  his  castle  chamber 
— to  “  give  my  Lord  of  Cashell  a  little  of  his  Irish  physic.” 
The  only  difficulty  was  what  to  do  with  them,  what  to  make 
of  them.  To  drive  them  up  and  down,  and  shove  them  like 
cattle,  what  did  it  do  after  all  ?  That  was  the  material  they 
were  made  of.  The  only  practical  aim  was  to  tie  their  hands, 
and  get  the  Church  revenues  away  from  them.  “  Look  you  to 
the  bishops,”  is  Laud’s  summary  of  ecclesiastical  advice  to  his 
friend.  Strafford,  as  President  of  the  North,  carried  Laud’s 
arrangements  into  effect  in  his  northern  domain.  And  “  make 
an  example  of  that  unworthy  Dean  ”  of  York  is  an  incidental 
notice  we  come  across. 

Laud’s  care  and  consideration  for  the  poorer  clergy,  in  the 
matter  of  property,  was  as  conspicuous  as  his  severity  to  the 
upper.  All  taxes  were  laid  with  the  greatest  attention  to  the 
diminishing  ratio  of  poverty.  He  instituted  a  new  scale  of 
taxation  to  effect  this  object.  He  relieved  them  in  ship-money 
collections.  At  the  Scotch  war,  when  money  was  wanted 
urgently,  no  “  poor  curates  or  stipendiaries  ”  were  to  be  made 
to  give.  The  London  clergy  were  cheated  out  of  the  value  of 
their  dues  :  the  charge  was  laid  upon  the  rent,  and  the  owners 
of  houses  paid  only  nominal  rent,  and  had  large  fines  instead  ; 
the  clergy  got  nothing.  “  Aldermen,  who  do  not  use  to  dwell 
in  sheds  and  cottages,  could  be  charged  with  no  more  than 
twenty  shillings  a  whole  year’s  tythe.”  The  clergy,  by  the 
alteration  of  religion,  had  lost  the  advantages  of  obits,  mor¬ 
tuaries,  obventions,  and  were  miserably  off.  The  Court  of 
Exchequer,  in  James’s  reign,  gave  them  relief  for  some  time  ; 
but  the  City  purse  prevailed  at  last  in  litigation.  Laud  took 
the  matter  up,  and  constructed  a  fair  valuation. 


i  So 


Archbishop  Laud. 


Schemes  for  the  general  advantage  of  the  Church  go  on. 
In  the  Diary  we  have  reference  to  what  looks  very  like 
Charles’s  known  intention  of  restoring  Church  land  in  the 
royal  possession.  “  March  20,  Sunday. — Ilis  Majesty  put  his 
great  conscience  to  me  about  all,  which  I  afterwards  answered. 
God  bless  him  in  it.” 

The  restoration  of  St.  Paul’s  Cathedral  was  a  favourite 
object.  He  stirred  up  all  the  available  sources  of  money  for 
it  in  the  kingdom.  A  hundred  pounds  a  year  his  own  con¬ 
tribution — the  effects  of  intestate  persons,  that  portion  of 
them  which  “  it  was  proper  to  give  to  pious  uses  ” — voluntary 
contributions  all  over  the  country,  among  the  clergy  especially, 
raised  a  considerable  sum  soon.  This  was  a  hobby  of  Laud’s, 
and  he  was  insatiable  in  wanting  money  for  it.  He  never 
cast  eyes  on  merchant,  tradesman,  or  any  substantial  man,  but 
he  thought  he  ought  to  give  something  to  St.  Paul’s.  Every 
pocket  was  looked  at,  and  the  fertility  of  his  mind  was  un¬ 
wearied  in  catching  every  opening  where  money  peeped.  His 
hobby  got  him,  in  fact,  into  scrapes,  which  came  up  against 
him  at  his  trial ;  and  he  paid  for  his  perpetual  Argus-eyed 
vigilance.  A  brewer  at  Lambeth  is  the  complainant  now. 
Laud  was  walking  in  his  garden  with  Attorney- General  Hoy, 
when  a  great  cloud  of  smoke  from  a  neighbouring  chimney 
almost  suffocated  them  both.  Hoy  said  he  should  have  the 
nuisance  removed.  Laud  said  he  would  not  interfere  with  an 
honest  man’s  trade,  and  did  not  mind  the  smoke.  However, 
Hoy,  in  returning  home,  calls  on  the  man,  and  threatens  him. 
The  man  comes  to  Laud  :  a  bright  thought  strikes  the  latter, 
that  this  is  an  opportunity  for  getting  something  for  St.  Paul’s. 
The  man  is  told  that  his  chimney  is  undoubtedly  a  nuisance, 
and  that  he  ought  to  give  St.  Paul’s  £20  in  atonement  for 
it.  The  man  offers  £10  ;  Laud  refuses  to  bargain,  and  sends 
him  off ;  but  the  chimney  was  left  to  its  fate,  and  fell  under  a 
blast  from  Attorney- General  Hoy. 

But  we  must  expand  Laud’s  ecclesiastical  domain,  and  see 
him  in  Ireland  and  Scotland.  The  work  was  going  on  under 
him  in  both  these  countries  at  the  same  time  that  it  was  in 
England. 


Archbishop  Laud.  1S1 

Laud,  at  the  commencement  of  his  career,  found  three  dis¬ 
tinct  Churches  in  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland,  differing 
from  each  other  in  articles  and  liturgy ;  all  in  confusion,  and 
each  going  on  in  a  way  of  its  own.  The  Irish  Church  main¬ 
tained  the  Lambeth  Articles,  and  was  Calvinised  at  the  very 
centre.  The  Scotch  Church  was  a  complete  chaos  and 
unformed  body,  simply  retaining  the  Episcopacy,  without  any 
other  external  marks  of  a  Church.  It  had  no  liturgy,  and 
the  bishops  were  little  more  than  moderators  of  Presbyterian 
Synods  and  General  Assemblies.  It  was  miserably  poor,  and 
a  slight  attempt  in  the  Episcopal  College  to  recover  a  modicum 
of  the  old  tithes  had  brought  down  upon  them  the  enmity  of 
a  whole  turbulent  and  rapacious  nobility.  Three  weak,  dis¬ 
ordered,  disunited  Churches  made  up  the  ecclesiastical  system 
of  the  kingdom. 

O 

Laud’s  was  a  centralising,  consolidating  mind.  He  did  not 
philosophise  on  the  subject  of  Church  unity,  or  enter  upon 
the  field  of  Church  metaphysics.  He  was  a  practical  man, 
and  had  his  work  before  him.  He  used  the  instrument  of 
unity  which  the  state  of  things  provided  for  him,  and  aimed 
at  the  production  of  an  efficient  unity  upon  the  Anglican 
domain.  He  wanted  uniformity  of  worship — some  good  com¬ 
mon  basis  for  the  whole  ecclesiastical  affairs  of  the  country  to 
go  upon.  He  had  the  centralising  powers  of  the  Crown  in  his 
hands ;  he  brought  the  Churches  together,  and  made  a  whole 
of  them. 

He  was  most  fortunate  in  Strafford  to  carry  out  his  plans 
in  Ireland.  He  and  Strafford  had  taken  to  each  other  wonder¬ 
fully,  and  were  friends  together  against  the  world  if  it  was 
necessary.  They  thoroughly  understood  and  trusted  each 
other  ;  and  the  political  friendship  had  grown  into  the  deepest 
mutual  affection.  Strafford  did  what  he  was  wanted  to  do  in 
Ireland  with  his  own  peculiar  despatch.  Convocation  was 
summoned  in  course  of  time,  and  told  to  give  up  the  Lambeth 
Articles,  and  take  the  English  ones.  They  remonstrated 
strongly  •  but  the  Viceroy’s  spirit  was  too  much  for  them. 
The  Articles  were  'carried  ;  the  Canons  were  carried.  Scholars 
were  sent  over  from  England,  and  the  University  of  Dublin 


lS2 


Archbishop  Laud. 


was  made  to  receive  a  nucleus  of  Church  theology  for  in¬ 
doctrinating  afresh  the  Irish  Church.  And  Laud,  as  Chan¬ 
cellor  of  Dublin,  had  also  his  own  personal  position  and 
influence  in  the  country. 

He  was  less  fortunate  in  his  agent  for  the  Scotch  Church. 
Lord  Traquair  had  been  made  what  he  was  entirely  by  Laud, 
who  raised  him  from  being  a  simple  Scotch  laird  to  an  earl¬ 
dom,  and  the  place  of  Lord  Treasurer  of  Scotland.  He  pitched 
on  him,  in  one  of  his  journeys  to  Scotland,  as  his  confidant 
and  manager  for  the  Scotch  Church.  Lord  Traquair  owed 
everything  to  Laud,  and  was  under  every  tie  of  personal 
gratitude  to  him  that  one  man  could  be  to  another.  But  acute 
eyes  are  deceived  occasionally.  Laud  was  wrong  in  his  man. 
Lord  Traquair  played  false.  He  sustained  the  Scotch  charac¬ 
ter  of  that  day,  undermined  his  patron,  and  Cf  communicated  his 
secret  instructions  to  the  opposite  party.”  Laud  depended  on 
him  for  knowing  the  proper  times  at  which  to  introduce 
particular  changes and  he  recommended  purposely  wrong 
ones,  and  delayed  the  Church  manifestations  till  the  opposite 
side  had  quite  marshalled  their  strength  to  meet  them. 

The  whole  business  of  the  Scotch  Church  was  an  unfortu¬ 
nate  one  from  the  first,  and  had  a  fate  accompanying  it ;  and 
yet  there  was  no  want  of  caution  and  forethought  in  the 
management  of  it.  The  ecclesiastical  movement  was  made  to 
proceed  as  cautiously  and  gradually  as  could  be.  Laud’s  first 
journey  into  Scotland  with  James  produced  no  immediate  step, 
and  simply  gave  the  Scotch  the  fact  of  the  English  Liturgy 
performed,  for  the  occasion,  in  the  royal  chapel  at  Holyrood. 
An  interval  of  some  years  followed,  and  another  royal  progress, 
for  Charles’s  Scotch  coronation,  left  behind  it  as  its  fruit  the 
regular  performance  of  the  Liturgy  in  Holyrood  Chapel ;  but 
only  in  Holyrood  as  yet.  That  fact  was  left  to  make  its  im¬ 
pression  on  the  Scotch  mind,  and  gradually  accustom  them  to 
the  idea.  A  book  of  canons  came  next.  And  it  was  twenty 
years  after  Laud’s  first  Scotch  visit  when  the  real  experiment 
of  a  Liturgy  and  Ritual  was  at  last  tried  upon  the  nation. 

A  higher  school  of  doctrine,  and  a  centre  of  Church  feeling, 
was  meantime  forming  in  the  episcopal  body  there.  The  old 


Archbishop  Laud . 


183 

bishopric  of  Edinburgh  was  revived,  and  was  given  to  Forbes, 
a  man  of  deep  learning  and  ascetic  life.  The  Scotch  epi¬ 
scopacy  rose  in  tone,  and  began  to  wish  for  a  higher  ritual,  in 
some  parts,  than  the  English  book  offered,  especially  a  new 
Communion  Service,  to  embody  the  doctrine  of  the  Eucharistic 
Sacrifice.  Laud  did  not  encourage  them  at  all ;  whether  from 
real  caution,  or  whether  he  only  adopted  a  manner,  we  can 
hardly  say.  He  used  to  say,  however,  he  had  not  encouraged 
them,  that  they  had  acted  independently,  and  so  on.  “  If  you 
really  wish  for  it,  and  are  in  earnest  among  yourselves,  have  it,” 
he  seems  to  have  said  ;  “  I  cannot  go  farther  in  my  position 
than  recommend  the  English  book  ;  you  are  Scotch  bishops, 
and  have  a  right  to  your  own  book.”  A  committee  of  Scotch 
bishops,  Spottiswoode,  Eoss,  and  Forbes,  sat  in  Edinburgh, 
arranging  the  Scotch  book.  Laud  took  the  deepest  interest 
in  the  new  Communion  Service,  and  superintended  the  sheets 
through  the  press.  And  “  inasmuch  as  no  reformation  in 
doctrine  or  discipline  can  be  made  perfect  at  once  in  any 
Church,”  one  of  the  newly-imposed  canons  left  an  opening  for 
further  alterations,  and  pronounced  that  it  should  be  “  lawful 
for  the  Kirk  of  Scotland  at  any  time  to  make  remonstrances  to 
his  Majesty,”  etc.  The  canon,  and  some  words  he  said  about 
it,  figured  against  him  afterwards.  “  Because  this  canon  holds 
the  door  open  to  more  innovation,”  says  the  accuser  at  his 
trial,  “  he  writes  to  the  prelate  of  Eoss,  his  prime  agent  in  all 
this  work,  of  his  great  gladness  that  this  ‘  canon  did  stand 
behind  a  curtain/  and  his  great  desire  that  this  canon  might 
be  printed  freely,  as  one  that  was  to  be  most  useful.”  “Vain 
accusation,”  answers  Laud  ;  “  I  expressly  brought  in  the  royal 
authority  ;  I  forbade  all  innovation  of  private  men,  lay  or  cleric. 
I  said  the  canon  stood  behind  a  curtain,  and  I  said  true  ;  it 
would  not  be  thoroughly  understood  by  every  man.” 

It  is  evident  that  the  Scotch  bishops  took  hints  easily,  and 
followed  up  Laud’s  line  just  in  the  way  a  man  likes  his  own 
line  to  be  followed — as  a  spontaneous  self- suggested  one.  lie 
had  an  influence  over  them  which  he  had  not  over  the  English 
bishops  generally.  They  gathered  round  him  when  he  ap¬ 
peared  in  Scotland;  and  popular  jealousy  called  them  his 


184  Archbishop  Laud. 

tools,  and  said  they  anticipated  his  wishes  before  he  expressed 
them. 

Scotland  and  Ireland  were  thus  growing  into  system  and 
solidity  under  his  hand,  in  doctrine  and  discipline  and  external 
resources.  A  tremendous  open  struggle  with  the  Irish  aristo¬ 
cracy  ended  in  the  addition  of  thirty  thousand  a  year  to  the 
Irish-  Church.  The  more  suitable  method  of  bargaining  was 
resorted  to  with  the  Scotch  nobles  ;  and  the  abbey  lands  of 
Arbroath,  Kelso,  and  others,  restored  by  the  Marquis  of 
Hamilton  and  Earl  of  Roxburgh  to  the  Church,  procured  these 
noblemen  some  Court  favours  in  exchange. 

Laud  had  confused  and  rough  materials  to  work  upon,  and 
he  did  a  great  deal  to  work  them  up  in  the  way  he  did.  He 
did  consolidate  as  he  professed  to  do,  and  the  effect  of  that 
consolidation,  in  spite  of  intervening  storms  which  have 
encroached  on  it,  remains  in  part  to  this  day.  The  consolida¬ 
tion  survives,  however,  its  original  spirit.  He  could  not 
perpetuate  a  friendly  monarchy ;  the  Protean  power  assumed 
another  aspect,  and  the  English  Church  became  secular  and 
latitudinarian  under  that  very  power  which  Laud  elevated  in 
order  to  make  her  Catholic. 

For  his  own  day,  however — he  did  not  go  into  futurity — for 
his  own  day,  he  provided  the  English  Church  with  what  it 
never  had  before,  and  has  never  had  since — an  efficient  govern¬ 
ment.  The  secret  of  his  efficiency  was  that  he  governed  the 
Church  himself,  and  allowed  no  other  bishop  in  the  country  at 
all  to  interfere  with  him.  There  is  a  plausible  colour  in  the 
charge  of  his  enemies  that  he  made  himself  the  English  Pope ; 
at  least  he  certainly  rather  roughly  used  the  absolute  theory  of 
diocesan  independence.  He  exercised  over  the  Episcopacy  of 
the  three  kingdoms  the  most  consummate  dictatorship,  and  it 
never  occurs  to  him  to  let  a  bishop  have  his  own  way  in  his 
diocese.  It  seems  at  first  sight  natural  that  an  Archbishop  of 
Dublin  should  look  after  the  churches  in  his  own  city ;  but 
Laud  takes  them  off  his  hands.  He  is  at  home  in  every 
diocese  in  the  three  kingdoms.  With  the  deepest  reverence 
for  the  office,  the  man — the  concrete  bishop — never  once 
seems  to  have  come  before  his  imagination  in  any  other  aspect 


Archbishop  Land . 


185 


than  as  a  person  who  wras  to  he  told  to  do  things,  and  to  he 
made  to  do  them  if  necessary.  For  the  Episcopacy  of  the  day, 
with  the  exception,  almost  solely,  of  his  own  appointments,  he 
entertains  a  very  respectable  quantum  of  contempt.  He  orders 
them  about,  drills  them  like  common  soldiers.  “  Eight  foot, 
left  foot — very  well ;  here  are  his  Majesty’s  orders  for  you, 
which  you  will  be  pleased  immediately  to  execute.  I  have 
had  nothing  to  do  with  making  them  myself — nothing  at  all. 
I  assume  no  power  whatever  over  you  ;  but  I  know  his  Majesty 
is  very  determined  on  these  points.  Your  Lordships  have 
been  idling  about  London  lately ;  you  must  go  down  to  your 
dioceses  all  of  you  immediately.  And  when  you  are  there,  I 
will  send  my  vicar-general  to  look  after  you.”  The  belief 
that  bishops  wanted  looking  after  quite  as  much  as  other 
people  is  very  deep  in  him,  and  from  the  centre  of  the  Eegale 
he  forms  them  into  one  body  round  him.  Annual  statements 
go  up  from  each  diocese  to  headquarters,  and  are  inspected  in 
business-like  way.  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  it,  the  fact 
cannot  be  denied  that  this  is  a  government. 

The  theory  of  the  day  with  respect  to  Church-government 
came  in, — forced  uniformity ;  Puritans,  recusants,  all  brought 
into  the  system  ;  no  fragments  alloAved,  and  all  made  one  tight 
whole.  The  lawfulness  of  using  force  for  religious  purposes  was 
a  long-standing  theory  in  the  world  which  had  not  then  dis¬ 
appeared  ;  and  all  sides  made  use  of  the  secular  arm,  when 
they  could  get  it,  as  a  matter  of  course.  The  law,  however, 
under  a  Laud  and  Charles  shows  certainly  a  slight  bias  in  its 
balance,  and  is  a  good  deal  more  stringent  with  the  Puritans 
than  the  Eoman  Catholics.  The  fines  on  the  recusants  grew 
lighter  and  lighter  throughout  Charles’s  reign,  till  at  last  an 
easy  composition  set  them  almost  free.  And  a  most  strange 
and  marked  departure  from  the  severities  of  Elizabeth’s,  and 
even  of  James’s,  reign  took  place. 

A  word  or  two  on  Laud’s  use  of  the  Eegale,  which  has  been 
going  on  all  this  time.  We  have  said  he  used  it  as  an  engine 
for  the  good  of  the  Church,  to  raise  her  and  not  to  secularise 
her.  This  is  simply  a  question  of  fact,  to  be  determined  by 
historical  reference.  A  man’s  motive  and  spirit  and  object  in 


1 86 


Archbishop  Laud. 


a  particular  line,  is  simply  an  individual  internal  fact  about 
that  person,  to  be  determined  by  evidence,  as  all  other  facts 
are.  No  extent  whatever  of  general  objectionableness  in  the 
principle  of  the  Eegale  can  decide  this  particular  fact  against 
Laud  :  no  a  priori  view  as  to  the  Eegale  itself  can  decide  Laud’s 
motive  in  adopting  it.  If  persons,  after  a  candid  examination 
of  the  facts  of  history,  come  to  the  conclusion  that  Laud  used 
the  Eegale  for  the  purpose  of  depressing  and  lowering  the 
Church’s  sacerdotal  ground,  that  is  quite  a  fair  line  of  argu¬ 
ment,  though  we  do  not  think  any  candid  mind  whatever,  of 
any  side  or  party,  could  come  to  that  decision.  But  the  fact 
cannot  be  predetermined  upon  general  grounds.  Laud  stretched 
the  Eegale  to  the  full,  and  made  it  do  everything  ;  he  stopped 
short  of  nothing  that  he  thought  he  could  do  by  it, — this  is  one 
fact.  The  animus,  ecclesiastical  or  secularising,  is  another  fact. 
We  do  not  think  that  the  English  Eegale,  but  Parliament,  was 
the  secularising  State  element  in  the  nation  in  Laud’s  day. 
Where  does  the  political  worldly  power  and  animus  of  the 
nation  reside  now  ?  Where  has  it  resided  since  the  revolution 
of  1688  but  in  Parliament  ?  The  Parliament  was  rising  rapidly 
to  this  position  then.  Every  nation  has  the  secularising  State 
element,  the  anti-Church  principle — the  world  residing  in  it  in 
some  part  or  other  of  it :  but  it  is  a  question  of  fact  for  the 
historical  eye  to  determine  in  what  particular  part  of  a  nation, 
at  a  particular  period,  that  animus  does  reside.  We  believe 
that  the  Plantagenets  were  the  genuine  representatives  of  the 
national  power  and  pride  in  their  day,  and  that  therefore  the 
State  element  resided  in  the  English  Eegale  then.  The  swing 
of  Henry  vm.’s  monarchy  was  simple  nationalism,  and  nothing 
else  :  the  nation  delighted  in  it.  The  State  element  in  Prussia 
and  Eussia  evidently  resides  now  in  the  Prussian  and  Eussian 
monarchy,  because  those  monarchies  are  the  focuses  respectively 
of  the  national  power  in  those  countries.  But  if  anything  is 
clear  in  English  history,  the  fact  is  clear  that  Parliament  was 
this  growing  national  .power  in  the  Stewart  times,  and  that  that 
power  had  left  the  monarchy  then  and  passed  into  the  mass. 
And  the  modern  English  monarchy  is  simply  the  reflection  of 
Parliament,  and  shares  its  spirit. 


Archbishop  Laud. 


1 87 

A  Churchman  has  one  rule  on  this  subject.  Wherever  that 
public  carnal  power  of  the  world-pure  resides,  whether  in  king 
or  people,  the  few  or  the  many,  with  it  the  Church  wrestles. 
There  is  our  antagonist.  Where  royalty  is  against  the  Church, 
and  the  people  for  her,  the  Churchman  sides  with  the  people  ; 
and  where  the  people  are  against  the  Church,  and  royalty  for 
her,  the  Churchman  sides  with  the  king.  There  is  no  unfair¬ 
ness  or  slipperiness  here,  for  the  line  is  a  plain  open  one. 
Show  us  the  “  world,”  anywhere,  and  we  are  bound  to  withstand 
it  :  wherever  it  is,  at  top  or  at  bottom,  in  earth  or  sky,  con¬ 
centrated  in  one,  or  diffused  in  a  mass,  that  “  power  of  the  air  ” 
is  what  we  fight  against.  The  Church  is  our  home.  If  any 
power  loves  the  Church,  we  love  it ;  if  not,  we  do  not. 

Nothing  can  show  more  closely  that  Laud’s  school  was  not 
exalting  the  Eegale  as  such,  than  the  marked  anti- Regale  line 
in  which  it  issued  at  last.  The  Nonjuring  school,  who  wrote 
vehemently  against  the  Regale,  were  legitimate  successors  of 
the  Laudian  one.  The  truth  was,  that  under  William  in.  the 
Regale  was  against  them,  and  under  Charles  1.  with  them. 
That  made  the  difference,  and  a  very  great  difference  it  is — 
what  is  called  in  ordinary  affairs  all  the  difference.  AVe  must 
look  historically  upon  these  things  to  be  able  to  judge. 

To  return  to  our  history.  The  effects  of  Laud’s  ecclesiastical 
administration  wTere  soon  seen.  One  of  the  most  prominent 
was  the  rise  of  the  clergy.  “  The  clergy  were  much  debased,” 
he  said  ;  “  but  it  had  heretofore  been  otherwise  ;  and  he  hoped 
to  see  it  so  again.”  Laud  exalted  his  order,  and  the  elevation 
of  the  clergy — the  priesthood — to  power,  came  more  and  more 
out,  like  a  favourite  idea,  as  his  career  advanced.  He  left 
behind  him,  on  returning  from  Charles’s  Scotch  coronation, 
Archbishop  Spottiswoode  Chancellor  of  Scotland,  and  the 
Bishop  of  Ross  privy  councillor.  A  greater  step  was  the  appoint¬ 
ment  of  Juxon  to  the  office  of  Lord  High  Treasurer.  The 
staff  was  put  into  his  hands  with  great  pomp  and  circumstance, 
and  he  was  conducted  in  state  from  London  House  to  West¬ 
minster,  the  Archbishop  riding  by  his  side,  and  a  cavalcade  of 
noblemen  and  gentlemen  following.  “  March  6,  Sunday,”  says 
the  Diary,  “  William  Juxon,  Lord  Bishop  of  London,  made 


1 88 


Archbishop  Laud. 


Lord  High  Treasurer  of  England.  No  Churchman  had  it  since 
Henry  vn.’s  time.  I  pray  God  bless  him  to  carry  it  so  that  the 
Church  may  have  honour,  and  the  King  and  State  service 
and  contentment  by  it.  And  now  if  the  Church  will  not  hold 
themselves  up,  under  God,  I  can  do  no  more.”  The  passage  is 
characteristic,  because  his  mind  is  so  obviously  going  back, 
unconsciously,  to  the  medieval  period  of  the  Church  for  its 
image,  and  congratulating  itself  on  the  partial,  evanescent 
restoration  of  it,  which  now  passes  like  a  dream  before  him  ; 
and  does  not  so  much  inspirit  him  as  a  reality  as  soothe  him 
as  a  picture.  He  “  can  do  no  more ;  ”  the  Church  may  fall, 
after  all,  but  its  image  gratifies  him.  The  ceremonial  of 
Charles’s  coronation  was  made  to  express  the  same  idea.  The 
priesthood  encircled  the  King.  The  Church  delivered  the 
crown  into  the  Prince’s  hands  ;  she  addressed  him,  as  she 
crowned  him :  “  Stand,  and  hold  fast  from  henceforth  the 
place  to  which  you  have  been  heir  by  the  succession  of  your 
fathers,  being  now  delivered  unto  you  by  the  authority  of  God, 
and  by  the  hands  of  us  and  all  the  bishops  and  servants  of 
God.  And  as  you  see  the  clergy  to  come  nearer  the  altar  than 
others,  so  remember  that  in  place  convenient  you  give  them 
greater  honour ;  that  the  Mediator  of  God  and  man  may 
establish  you  in  the  kingly  throne,  to  be  the  mediator  between 
the  clergy  and  the  laity,  that  you  may  reign  for  ever  with 
Jesus  Christ,  the  King  of  kings  and  Lord  of  lords.” 

The  form  of  alliance  which  makes  the  Church  succumb  to 
the  State  is  Erastian ;  the  form  which  makes  it  guide  the 
State  is  not.  Laud  put  power  into  the  hands  of  the  clergy,  as 
being  clergy.  This  is  the  very  opposite  of  Erastianism.  The 
modern  German  Church  and  State  idea  brings  the  Church  into 
the  world  by  secularising  her ;  absorbs  her  into  the  State  first, 
and  when  she  has  become  the  State,  lets  her  act.  It  is  a  per¬ 
fectly  different,  distinct,  opposite  idea,  which  gives  power  to 
the  priesthood,  as  such,  and  recognises  the  sacerdotal  element 
per  se  in  its  combination  with  the  political. 

Laud’s  partiality  for  his  order  was  generous.  The  tempta¬ 
tion  in  the  higher  ranks  of  clergy  is  generally  just  the  reverse 
- — to  think  more  of  the  laity  than  of  their  own  brethren,  and 


Archbishop  Laud. 


identify  themselves  with  the  influential  secular  world.  Mere 
sacerdotal  rank  is  despised,  because  it  is  not  earthly  rank,  and 
is  used  only  as  a  stepping-stone  to  it.  Laud’s  predecessor  was 
a  remarkable  contrast  to  him  here,  and  exhibited  all  that 
leaning  to  secular  rank  which  has  so  characterised- the  puri¬ 
tanical  religious  school.  Abbot  “  non  amavit  gentem  nostram ,” 
says  Heylin  :  “  he  favoured  the  laity  above  the  clergy  in  all 
cases  which  were  brought  before  him ;  he  forsook  the  birds  of 
his  own  feather,  to  fly  with  others.”  A  country  gentleman  had 
only  to  make  his  complaint  against  a  clergyman,  and  Abbot 
was  all  ear  to  him.  He  abandoned  the  old  archiepiscopal 
hospitalities  at  Canterbury  to  Church  tenants  and  poor, 
which  all  his  predecessors  had  kept  up,  and  feasted  the  Kentish 
gentry  at  Lambeth  instead  ;  and  “  Westminster  Hall,  St.  Paul’s 
Church,  and  the  Royal  Exchange”  (the  rendezvous  of  the  day), 
were  visited  by  his  servants,  with  tickets  of  invitation  in  their 
hands,  to  catch  the  men  of  quality  they  sawr  about.  Laud  gave 
himself  small  concern  on  this  head.  “  He  did  court  persons 
too  little,”  says  Clarendon.  People  complained  that  he  went 
to  the  other  extreme,  and  that  “out  of  a  dislike  to  that  popu¬ 
larity  which  was  too  much  affected  by  his  predecessor,  he  was 
carried  on  so  far  as  to  fail  in  many  necessary  civilities  to  the 
nobility  and  gentry,  by  which  he  might  have  obliged  them, 
and  indeed  himself.”  A  “reserved  and  unplausible  humour” 
was  attributed  to  him ;  and  one  of  the  Kentish  gentlemen, 
whom  Abbot  had  feasted,  and  he  had  not,  was  observed  to 
“  throw  the  first  dirt  at  him  ”  in  Parliament  when  his  troubles 
came.  He  made  nobles  and  gentry  frown,  the  clergy  look  up  : 
and  great  men  were  alarmed  and  annoyed  as  “  they  did  ob¬ 
serve  the  inferior  clergy  took  more  upon  them  than  they  wTere 
wont,  and  did  not  live  towards  their  neighbours  of  quality,  or 
their  patrons  themselves,  with  that  civility  and  condescension 
they  used  to  do  ;  which  disposed  them  likewise  to  withdrawing 
their  countenance  and  good-neighbourhood  from  them.” 

The  rise  of  an  ecclesiastical  discipline  began  to  be  felt.  It 
made  its  appearance  under  a  parti-coloured  secular  garb,  but 
still  the  ecclesiastical  animus  was  seen  underneath  and  hated 
as  such.  The  High  Commission  Court,  with  all  its  lay  lords 


Archbishop  Land. 


190 

and  privy  councillors,  worked  by  the  archiepiscopal  head, 
showed  an  animus.  It  attacked  the  immoralities  of  the  nobles 
with  boldness  ;  and  the  fault  charged  upon  law,  that  it  catches 
the  small  offenders  and  lets  the  great  ones  through,  was  not 
seen  there.  “  He  intended  the  discipline  of  the  Church/’  says 
Clarendon,  “should  be  felt  as  well  as  spoken  of;  and  that  it 
should  be  applied  to  the  greatest  and  most  splendid  transgressor, 
as  well  as  to  the  punishment  of  smaller  offences  and  meaner 
offenders  ;  and  therefore  called  for  and  cherished  the  discovery 
of  those  who  were  not  careful  to  cover  their  own  iniquities, 
thinking  they  were  above  the  reach  of  other  men  or  their 
power  and  will  to  chastise.  Persons  of  honour  and  great 
quality  at  the  Court,  and.  of  the  country,  were  every  day  cited 
into  the  High  Commission  Court  upon  the  fame  of  their  incon¬ 
tinence  or  other  scandal  in  their  lives,  and  were  there  prose¬ 
cuted  to  their  shame  and  punishment,”  and  complained  of  what 
they  called  “  the  insolent  triumph  upon  their  degree  and 
quality,  and  levelling  them  with  the  common  people.”  Laud 
was  working  a  dangerous  weapon  for  himself,  and  the  resent¬ 
ment  of  an  offended  nobility  retaliated  fearfully  upon  him  at 
his  trial.  “  They  never  forgot  ”  these  acts,  and  “  watched  for 
revenge.”  English,  Irish,  Scotch  nobles,  he  had  come  into 
contact  with  them  all.  The  Church  sentence  and  rebuke,  the 
Church  lands  got  back,  the  Church  an  obstacle  and  sore  point 
in  some  way,  were  remembered.  The  strength  of  the  nobles 
and  the  pride  which  accompanies  strength  had  been  growing 
apace  as  royalty  was  declining.  “The  grandees  of  the  Puritan 
faction,”  says  Heylin,  “  after  the  first  heats  were  over  in  Queen 
Elizabeth’s  time,  carried  on  their  work  for  thirty  years  together 
like  moles  underground,  not  casting  up  any  earth  before  them 
till  they  had  made  so  strong  a  party  in  the  House  of  Commons 
that  they  could  do  anything.”  And  a  still  larger  class,  “  who 
loved  the  established  government  of  the  Church,  and  the 
exercise  of  religion  as  it  was  used,  and  desired  not  a  change  in 
either,  and  did  not  dislike  the  order  and  decency  which  they 
saw  mended,  yet  liked  not  any  novelties,  and  entertained 
jealousies”  (how  descriptive  of  the  Conservatives  of  the  day!), 
were  sore  about  the  whole  movement.  It  is  the  national  char- 


Archbishop  Laud. 


19 1 

acter  over  again.  How  aptly  does  the  whole  of  Clarendon’s 
account — the  more  so  from  his  own  sympathies  with  the  class 
he  mentions — apply,  mutatis  mutandis,  to  our  present  move¬ 
ments  !  The  instinctive,  vague,  antagonistic  sensation  which  the 
English  mind  feels  on  the  first  symptoms  of  the  Church  moving 
and  showing  life  seems  to  he  hereditary  in  us.  The  greater 
honour  to  him  who  did  not  shrink  from  encountering  it.  It 
should  ever  be  remembered,  as  a  piece  of  historical  justice  to 
Laud,  that  his  was  a  contest  with  the  great  of  this  world  ;  that 

0 

the  honourer  and  cherisher  of  his  poor  clerical  brethren, 
brought  the  high  noble  before  the  bar,  rebuked  his  vices,  or 
made  him  refund  his  spoils,  and  fought  the  Church  battles 
with  him. 

A  new  theological  race  of  clergy  had  sprung  up  under 
Laud’s  administration.  The  tone  of  the  clerical  body  was 
altered ;  and  a  theological  school,  which  was  a  mere  handful 
when  he  commenced  life  at  Oxford,  had  spread  over  the  coun¬ 
try  in  all  directions.  Oxford  itself,  from  being  a  focus  of 
Calvinism,  had  come  round,  and  hardly  knew  its  new  reflection 
in  the  theology  of  Jeremy  Taylor  and  Hammond.  A  Puritan 
remnant  remained,  and  perambulated  their  old  haunts,  but  they 
felt  their  occupation  of  the  place  gone,  and  saw  another  stan¬ 
dard  on  the  ascendant,  a  new  genius  loci  penetrating  the  air. 
The  crowds  of  clergy  whom  the  Rebellion  and  directory  threw 
out  of  their  places  show  the  strong  growth  that  had  been  going 
on  in  the  Church  at  large,  and  the  change  of  Church  of  Eng¬ 
land  theology  that  a  few  years  had  brought  about.  Laud  was 
popular  with  the  inferior  clergy,  though  not  much  so  with  his 
brethren  on  the  bench.  He  stood  up  for  their  rights,  watched 
their  interests,  saw  that  they  were  not  ill-used  ;  was  courteous 
to  them  when  they  came  personally  across  him  ;  would  take 
great  pains,  by  private  talking  and  arguing,  to  convert  any  of 
them  from  puritanical  tendencies.  The  bias  of  his  mind  was 
toward  the  inferior  clergy — the  direct  open  Puritan,  of  course, 
excepted.  It  is  a  natural  tendency  of  a  centre  toward  the 
mass  ;  and  the  mass  returns  the  compliment.  The  mass  gathers 
round  its  centre,  and  rejoices  in  a  good  strong  hold  on  the 
middle  of  it,  in  feeling  something  beyond  the  adjacent  boundary 


192  Archbishop  Laud. 

and  local  defence.  Land  was  an  immovable  personal  centre 
of  tlie  Churchmanship  in  the  nation.  They  knew  they  could 
trust  him ;  that  they  could  lean  upon  him,  and  that  he  would 
not  give  way.  His  was  an  absolute,  pertinacious,  real  substance, 
formed  and  hardened  in  a  perpetual  life  of  action  and  responsi¬ 
bility,  risk,  and  trial.  Whatever  there  was  of  him  was  solid 
stone ;  a  mind,  by  undergoing  a  certain  ordeal,  mineralises,  and 
turns  into  hard  transparent  crystal,  into  an  adamantine  occu¬ 
pant  of  the  bodily  frame.  There  he  stood  in  the  middle,  and 
concentrated  singly  the  hardness  of  the  mass.  The  clergy  were 
proud  of  him,  and  took  their  cue  from  him,  and  called  him 
high-sounding  names,  and  addresses  and  eulogiums  adopted  the 
“  Sanctitas  tua”  and  the  “  Summits  Poniifex  ,”  and  the  “  Arc- 
angelus,”  and  “  Quo  rectior  non  stat  regula.”  “  The  meanest  title 
of  them,”  he  says,  “  far  too  much  applied  to  my  person  and  un¬ 
worthiness.”  “  High  language  for  such  an  unworthy  person 
“  absolute  hyperbole,”  but  well  meant,  only  a  way  of  express¬ 
ing  “  that  I  deserved  well  of  them  “  effusions  from  a  luxuri¬ 
ant  pen  that  ran  upon  these  phrases.” 

Laud  was  not  inattentive  to  public  opinion.  With  all  his 
use  of  power,  he  made  use  of  the  press  as  well ;  argued  in  print, 
and  answered  what  came  out  on  the  Puritan  side.  Heylin’s 
Antidotum  Lincolniense  answered  Williams’s  attack  on  the 
communion-table  question.  The  Scotch  Liturgy  was  followed 
immediately  by  an  Apology ;  Bishop  Hall  wrote  his  Divine 
Right  of  Episcopacy  to  counteract  the  rising  Scotch  Presby¬ 
terian  influence  before  the  invasion.  The  state  of  the  religious 
press  in  general,  apart  from  the  peculiar  points  of  controversy, 
was  attended  to,  and  the  rise  of  Socinian  principles  in  the  books 
of  the  day  had  created  his  alarm.  Hales  of  Eton  wrote  a 
latitudinarian  treatise,  in  which  he  carried  out  the  right  of 
private  judgment  to  its  full  development,  and,  in  short,  quite 
forestalled  the  liberaL  theory  of  the  present  day.  Laud  sent 
for  him,  and  they  argued  together  the  whole  morning.  The 
hour  for  dinner  broke  off  the  discussion.  Heylin  tells  us  it 
had  a  great  effect  upon  Hales,  who  told  him  (Heylin)  that  his 
opinions  had  been  much  changed  by  it.  Mr.  Hallam  does  not 
believe  Heylin  here.  We  can  only  say  that  Heylin  asserts  it 


Archbishop  Laud. 


193 


as  a  fact,  and  that  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not  he  true. 
The  school  of  Hoadley  and  the  eighteenth  century  had  its  seed 
in  the  English  Church  even  now,  which  favouring  circumstances 
afterwards  brought  out.  And  even  direct  Socinian  hooks  had, 
in  the  confusion  of  religious  war,  crept  in  to  a  formidable  extent. 
Laud  weeded  the  press  of  them. 

We  have  attempted  something  of  an  outline  of  Laud’s  career. 
He  acted  boldly,  and  he  paid  for  it.  He  had  his  endurance 
taxed  considerably  :  the  attacks  which  poured  in  upon  him 
from  all  sides  throughout  were,  in  multitudinous  vehemence, 
equal  to  what  any  public  man  in  this  world  ever  experienced. 
The  fact  that  Prynne’s  ears  were  cut  off  by  an  order  of  Star 
Chamber,  is  considered  by  many  to  have  been  an  ample  internal 
satisfaction  to  him  for  his  whole  personal  experience  from  this 
quarter.  Without  defending  cutting  off  ears,  and  the  punish¬ 
ments  of  the  day,  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that  Prynne  was  not 
punished  as  an  assailant  of  Laud,  but  as  a  simple  criminal. 
His  abuse  of  the  Eoyal  Majesty  and  the  King’s  ministers  was  a 
simple  crime  then,  just  as  stealing  was,  and  he  was  punished 
for  it. 

The  Puritans  had  an  unrivalled  command  of  vituperative 
phraseology  and  fertility  in  calling  names,  which  found  a  full 
vent  in  this  channel.  Libels  sprang  up  out  of  the  ground  as 
thick  as  snakes  in  Oriental  herbage.  They  found  their  way  to 
Laud’s  closet,  study,  dining-room,  bedroom.  His  very  office 
of  Press-censorship  brought  them  under  his  eyes,  and  the 
writers  had  the  satisfaction  of  knowing,  that  if  even  their  pro¬ 
duction  was  stopped,  Laud  had  seen  it,  and  had  had  his  own 
suspended  effigy  brought  to  his  own  windows.  And,  indeed, 
these  portraitures  were  no  pleasing  objects  even  for  closet- 
inspection.  Laud’s  library -table  concentrated  under  his  eye, 
in  camera- obscura  reflection,  the  bitterness  and  hostilities  of  a 
whole  excited  world  without.  The  titles  of  Prynne’s  Quench- 
Coctl,  and  News  from  Ipswich,  Bastwick’s  Flagellum  Epi- 
scoporum  Latialium ;  the  Histrio-Mastix,  and  one  or  two 
others,  have  just  survived  out  of  a  vast  ephemeral  ocean  of 
pamphlets.  A  grotesque  irony  and  an  unmeasured  hyperbole 
alternate ;  fierce  grins  and  dreadful  foulness ;  “  Arch-piety, 
m.e.-i.]  1ST 


194 


Archbishop  Laud. 


Arch- charity,  Arch- wolf,  Arcli-agent  for  the  devil,  Beelzebub 
himself  become  Archbishop,  the  devil’s  most  triumphant  arch 
to  adorn  his  victories,  is  a  specimen  of  the  more  witty  and 
polished  style  of  vituperation.  These  pamphlets  stuck  at 
nothing,  raked  up  stories,  abused  him  for  his  birth,  or  ridiculed 
his  size,  or  called  him  dirt,  or  filth,  or  poison ;  were  simple 
nonsense  and  trash,  except  for  the  animus  of  dreadful  enmity 
which  all  this  grotesqueness  expressed.  Odd  people  and 
monomaniacs  became  the  strays  and  waifs  of  the  popular 
feeling,  and  took  a  fancy  for  attacking  Laud.  “  One  Boyer,  a 
felon  just  broke  out  of  prison,  grossly  abused  him  to  his  face, 
accusing  him  of  high  treason.”  “  One  Greene,  a  poor  decayed 
printer  (for  whom  Laud  had  got  a  pension  of  five  pounds 
a  year  from  the  Company  of  Stationers),  adventured  into  the 
Court  of  St.  James’s  with  a  great  sword  by  his  side,  desperately 
swearing  that  if  the  King  would  not  do  him  justice  with  the 
Archbishop,  he  would  take  another  course  with  him.”  One 
Lady  Davies  “  scatters  a  prophecy  against  him.”  This  lady 
“  had  the  reputation  of  a  ‘  cunning  woman  ’  among  the  common 
people,  and  she  prophesies  of  the  Archbishop,  that  he  should 
live  but  two  days  after  the  fifth  of  November.  She  is  brought 
before  the  High  Commission.  The  woman  had  grown  so  mad 
that  she  fancied  the  spirit  of  the  prophet  Daniel  had  been 
infused  into  her  body.  And  this  she  grounded  on  an  anagram 
which  she  made  on  her  name,  viz.,  Eleanor  Davies , — Reveal,  0 
Daniel.  Much  pains  was  taken  by  the  Court  to  dispossess  her 
of  this  spirit,  but  all  would  not  do,  till  Lamb,  the  Dean  of 
Arches,  shot  her  through  and  through  with  an  arrow  borrowed 
from  her  own  quiver.  For  while  the  bishops  and  divines  were 
reasoning  the  point  with  her  out  of  Holy  Scripture,  he  took  a 
pen  in  his  hand,  and  hit  upon  this  excellent  anagram,  viz., 
Dame  Eleanor  Davies, — Never  so  mad  a  ladie.  ‘  Madam,’  said 
he,  ‘  I  see  you  build  much  on  anagrams,  and  I  have  found  out 
one  which  I  hope  will  fit  you.’  He  read  it  aloud,  which 
brought  the  grave  Court  to  such  laughter,  and  the  woman  to 
such  confusion,  that  she  grew  either  wiser,  or  was  less  regarded 
afterwards.”  A  wild,  furious  world  of  enemies,  had  much  more 
formidable  ones  above  them  ;  and  violence  and  vulgarity  had 


Archbishop  Laud. 


T95 


their  main  sting  in  the  black  looks  of  great  men  enjoying 
the  scene.  After  all,  it  is  not  pleasant  to  he  really  hated 
by  any  man ;  it  is  not  pleasant  to  be  abused.  A  vulgar 
fellow  abuses  you  in  the  streets  ;  he  may  be  as  vulgar  as  the 
dirt ;  still  there  is  the  fact — you  are  abused ;  and  the  words 
physically  touch  you,  as  it  were,  and  there  is  defilement. 

Laud’s  was  a  peculiarly  sensitive  mind,  acutely  realising 
this  metaphysical  dirt  and  foulness,  and  feeling  that  it  swal¬ 
lowed  something  nasty  in  the  process  of  abuse.  No  quantity 
of  experience  familiarised  him  to  it.  A  crowd  of  faces,  and 
eyes  staring,  mouths  railing  at  him,  as  if  he  were  some 
monster,  are  pictured  in  his  mind.  He  has  a  dislike  to  be 
stared  at.  He  “  stays  at  Lambeth  till  the  evening,  to  avoid 
the  gazing  of  the  people.”  The  sensation  of  “  being  gazed 
at,”  as  if  a  gaze  was  a  sort  of  tangible  nuisance  inflicted,  and 
a  low  intrusion,  comes  out,  unconsciously,  often ;  reminding 
one  almost  of  the  feeling  of  children  against  being  looked  at. 
And  “being  railed  at,”  “jeered”  (he  dreams  of  courtiers 
jeering  him),  was  a  sort  of  reality  in  the  same  way;  a  material 
plastering,  as  it  were,  of  so  much  offensive  substance  upon 
him.  He  “  endures  ”  a  mob’s  railing  by  the  pure  power  of 
mental  prayer  at  the  time,  as  if  it  were  a  regular  sustained 
passive  contact  with  literal  external  evil.  We  mean  that  he 
could  not  bear  these  demonstrations  of  hatred  :  i.e.  could  bear 
but  never  without  deeply  feeling  them. 

Laud  had  that  particular  framework  of  mind  which  domi¬ 
ciliates  and  harbours  all  hostile  phenomena.  A  curious  mix¬ 
ture  of  innocence  and  self-complacency  makes  some  persons 
never  see  when  they  are  treated  ill.  The  fact  glances  off 
from  them  without  making  any  impression,  and  does  not  gain 
an  eritrance  into  their  imperturbable  easy  good-nature.  An¬ 
other  class  of  mind  is  a  magazine  of  hostile  matter,  a  military 
depot.  A  shadowy  archetype  of  war  resides  within  them,  and 
readily  admits  the  phenomena  from  without — a  word,  a  look,  a 
sign,  a  gesture  of  another  ;  and  they  are  the  theatre  of  a  per¬ 
petual  invisible  strife  ;  and  metaphysical  forces  and  strategies, 
ambuscades,  surprises,  retreats,  the  arrow  from  a  corner,  and  a 
terra  incognita  of  foes,  compose  the  dark  background  of  the 


196 


Archbishop  Laud. 


interior  mental  scene.  The  mind  carries  on  a  perpetual 
unconscious  reference  to  some  Protean  enemy,  here  or  there  or 
everywhere  :  it  talks  to  itself  of  enemies,  prays  against  them  ; 
longs  for  deliverance  from  its  enemies.  There  is  a  religious 
form  of  this  habit  of  mind.  The  Psalms  are  full  of  the  men¬ 
tion  of  the  enemy.  “  The  ungodly  bend  the  bow,  and  make 
ready  their  arrows  within  the  quiver,  that  they  may  privily 
shoot  at  them  which  are  true  of  heart.”  The  “  soul  is  among 
lions:”  “  the  enemy”  persecutes  her,  lays  snares  for  her,  speaks 
evil  of  her  :  she  goeth  heavily,  and  “  would  flee  as  a  bird  unto 
the  hill,  while  the  enemy  oppresseth  her.” 

Laud’s  devotions  are  peculiarly  indicative  of  this  state  of 
mind.  Their  characteristic  tone  almost  makes  them  unfit  for 
ordinary  use  ;  the  individual  so  pervades  them.  He  is  labour¬ 
ing  under  a  pressure,  engaged  in  a  hard  unpromising  struggle, 
surrounded  by  enemies  and  persons  who  wish  him  evil,  with 
the  snare  and  the  pit*  open  for  him,  and  he  prays  against  them. 
All  sides  think  themselves  in  the  right,  and  yet  there  is  a 
quietness  and  depth  in  the  Church’s  confidence  in  the  rightness 
of  her  side,  which  her  opponents  want.  The  most  perfect 
tranquil  assurance  that  he  is  fighting  against  the  enemies  of 
God  appears  in  Laud’s  devotions ;  and  a  career  of  simple 
religious  sincerity,  doing  what  it  thinks  its  mere  duty  and 
work,  is  their  substratum.  He  expresses  his  weariness  and  his 
longings  in  the  prayer  of  St.  Augustine  :  “  Long  time,  0  Lord, 
have  I  struggled  against  heresies,  and  am  almost  wearied. 
Come,  Lord  Jesus,  mightiest  Warrior,  Prince  of  the  host  of  the 
Lord,  Conqueror  of  the  devil  and  the  world  :  take  arms  and 
shield,  and  rise  up  and  help  me.”  “  Tempore  adverso  ” — 
“  Auxilium” — “ Deliverance  ” — appear  at  the  margin  of  the 
prayers.  “  Deal  with  me,  0  God,  according  to  Thy  name,  for 
sweet  is  Thy  mercy.  0  deliver  me,  for  I  am  helpless  and  poor, 
and  my  heart  is  wounded  within  me.”  “  Mine  eyes  are  ever 
looking  unto  Thee,  0  Lord ;  0  pluck  my  feet  out  of  the  net.” 
“  I  deal  with  the  thing  that  is  lawful  and  right,  0  give  me  not 
over  unto  mine  oppressors  :  ”  “  let  the  proud  do  me  no  wrong.” 
“  I  have  heard  the  blasphemy  of  the  multitude,  and  fear  is  on 
every  side.”  “  Thou  hast  fed  me  with  the  bread  of  tears,  and 


Archbishop  Laud. 


197 


given  me  plenteousness  of  tears  to  drink.”  “  I  am  become  a 
very  strife  unto  my  neighbours,  and  mine  enemies  laugh  me 
to  scorn.”  “  Gracious  Father,  the  life  of  man  is  a  warfare  upon 
earth ;  be  present  with  me  in  the  services  of  my  calling. 
That  which  I  cannot  foresee,  I  beseech  Thee  prevent ;  that 
which  I  cannot  withstand,  I  beseech  Thee  master ;  that  which 
Ido  not  fear,  I  beseech  Thee  unmask  and  frustrate.  Especially, 
0  Lord,  bless  and  preserve  me  at  . this  time  from  M.  1ST.,  that  I 
may  glorify  Thee  for  this  deliverance  also.”  A  religious  pleasure 
which  a  mind  has,  that  feels  itself  to  'be  genuine  and  trans¬ 
parent,  in  the  appeal  to  the  he  art,  with  in — the  communion  with 
the  'v/oryy,  and  turning  to  her  for  society,  love,  and  re¬ 
pose  ;  the  confidence  and  clear  air  within,,  appear  in  Laud. 

We  must  go  back  again  to  Laud  as  a- statesman.  Side  by 
side  with  the  ecclesiastical  administration,  a.  host,  of  other  duties 
devolved  upon  him  in  the  State  department. 

The  University  of  Oxford  lay  half-way  between  the  two. 
He  was  no  nominal  Chancellor  there  ;  it. got  , a  1  real  head  to  look 
after  it  when  it  chose  him.  A11  interval  of  twenty  years 
found  Laud  in  a  rather  curiously  different  position  there  from 
what  he  started  with  ;  and  the  once .  hit  at  and  preached  at 
Fellow  of  St.  John’s  was  ruling  the  i. University  with  a  high 
hand  from  his  library  at  Lambeth.  “  I  pray,”  is  his  first  letter 
to  the  Vice-Chancellor  after  his  appointment,  “  call  the  Heads 
of  Colleges  and  Halls  together,  together  with  the  Proctors,  and 
with  my  love  remembered  to  them  all,  let  them  know  I  am 
welcomed  unto  my  Chancellorship  with; many  complaints  from 
very  great  men.”  The  “  outward  and  visible  form  of  the 
University,”  he  hears,  “  is  utterly  decayed,  so  that  strangers 
that  come  have  hardly  any  mark  by  which  they  know  it  is  a 
University.”  He  proceeds  immediately  to  the. revival  of  proper 
academical  “  Formalities,”  in  the  “  Schools,  Convocation,  Con¬ 
gregation  houses,  Latin  sermons.”  “  Put  the  tables  of  statute 
observance  on  St.  Mary’s  doors,”  he  concludes,  “  and  proceed  to 
the  execution  of  them.”  Letter  after  letter  gave  his  directions 
about  the  discipline  of  the  place,  down  to  the  minutest  details. 

“  And  I  pray  you,”  he  writes,  “  see  that  none  of  the  youth  be 
suffered  to  go  in  boots  and  spurs,  or  to  wear  their  hair  in- 


198 


Archbishop  Laud. 


decently  long,  or  with  a  lock  in  the  present  fashion,  or  with 
slashed  doublets,  or  in  any  light  or  garish  colours.  And  if 
noblemen  will  have  their  sons  court  it  too  soon,  the  fault  shall 
be  theirs,  not  mine.”  He  will  allow  no  “  riding- school,  or 
suffer  the  scholars  to  fall  into  the  old  humour  of  going  up  and 
down  in  boots  and  spurs,  and  then  having  this  excuse  ready, 
that  they  are  going  to  the  riding-house.”  “And  for  Mr.  Crofts, 
and  his  great  horses,  he  may  carry  them  back  if  he  pleases, 
as  he  brought  them.”  “  I  pray  give  Mr.  Crofts  thanks  fairly 
for  his  good  intentions,  but  he  must  not  stay.”  “  And  farther, 
I  would  have  you  speak  with  the  Principal  of  Brasenose,  that 
he  would  command  their  cellar  to  be  better  looked  to — [he  is 
writing  about  having  more  orderly  disputations] — that  no 
strong  and  unruly  argument  be  drawn  from  that  topic  place.” 
Academical  disputations,  times  of  morning  and  evening  College 
prayer,  the  revival  of  the  Holy  Communion  at  the  beginning 
of  term,  instructions  as  to  Church-reverence,  succeed  one  an¬ 
other.  The  procuratorial  cycle  was  his  remedy  for  the 
disorders  then  attending  the  public  election  of  the  Proctors  ; 
and  the  Laudian  statute-book,  together  with  alterations, 
laboriously  abridged  and  arranged,  bears  witness  to  the  chaotic 
mass  to  which  a  period  of  neglect  had  reduced  the  University 
statutes. 

The  Commission  of  the  Treasury,  in  1635,  brought  a  wholly 
new  and  complicated  department  of  State-business  upon 
him.  An  interval  of  some  time  had  released  him  parfially 
from  political  business,  and  allowed  him  to  devote  himself 
more  exclusively  to  the  Church ;  but  the  discovery  of  frauds  in 
the  Treasury  again  brought  him  into  the  thick  of  it.  He 
determined  to  see  that  department  put  to  rights.  He,  Coventry, 
Cottington,  and  the  great  State- officers,  constituted  the  Com¬ 
mission.  His  brother- states  men  were  not  at  all  obliged  to  him 
for  his  public  spirit  and  threatened  reforms,  and  thwarted  him 
with  considerable  malice.  “  His  old  friend  Windebank  forsook 
him  in  the  matter,”  says  the  Diary,  “and  joined  with  the  Lord 
Cottington,  which  put  him  to  the  exercise  of  a  great  deal  of 
patience.”  “Por  your  Spaniard  [to  Strafford],  and  the  gravity 
which  he  learned  there,  while  he  went  to  buy  pigeons,  hath 


Archbishop  Land. 


199 


tempted  my  old  friend  the  Secretary  from  me,  and  is  become 
his  man.  So  I  have  need  to  look  to  myself.”  Cottington  (the 
Spaniard)  was  no  friend  of  Laud’s  at  any  time  ;  and  Clarendon 
tells  of  his  taking  in  Laud  on  one  occasion,  by  a  story  of  the 
King,  a  great  lover  of  the  sport,  going  to  turn  some  royal 
farms  into  a  hunting  chase.  It  was  a  lie  of  Cottington’s,  and 
Laud  gave  the  King  a  warm  lecture  upon  his  extravagance  for 
nothing,  except  that  his  Majesty  was  amused  at  the  mistake. 
Cottington  seems  to  have  intended  something  more  serious. 
Laud  had  a  whole  set  of  half-enemies  about  him  at  Court,  and 
his  and  Strafford’s  alliance  was  an  object  of  fear  and  jealousy 
to  the  myrmidons  of  that  sphere. 

Laud,  at  sixty-two,  set  to  work  thoroughly  to  get  up 
Treasury  business.  An  anecdote  illustrates  his  official  sway. 
The  great  battle  in  the  financial  department  then  was  between 
the  public  service  and  private  men, — the  interests  of  a  class 
of  farmers  and  monopolists  and  the  interests  of  the  royal  ex¬ 
chequer  ;  and  the  mercantile  world  suffered  grievously  by  these 
jobs. 

“  There  was  a  merchant  of  the  greatest  reputation  (Daniel 
Harvey),  who  having  a  country  house  within  the  distance  of  a 
few  miles  from  Croydon,  and  understanding  the  whole  business 
of  trade  more  exactly  than  most  men,  was  always  very  welcome 
to  the  Archbishop,  who  used  to  ask  him  many  questions  about 
such  matters.  Upon  an  accidental  discourse  between  them, 
what  encouragement  merchants  ought  to  receive  who  brought 
a  great  trade  into  the  kingdom,  Mr.  Harvey  mentioned  the 
discouragements  they  had  received  in  the  late  times  by  the 
rigour  of  the  Earl  of  Portland,  in  matters  that  related  nothing 
to  the  King’s  service,  but  to  the  profit  of  private  men.”  A 
long  story  follows  : — “  Lord  Portland,  the  Treasurer,  compelled 
the  merchants  to  land  their  fine  goods,  silks  and  linens,  at 
Customhouse  Quay ;  whereas  they  had  always  been  free  to  ship 
or  unship  such  goods  at  what  wharf  they  would  choose  for  their 
convenience.”  But  the  Customhouse  Quay  belonged  to  private 
wharfingers,  who  had  secured  Lord  Portland’s  interest ;  and, 
to  the  prejudice  of  the  trade  of  the  country,  public  convenience 
gave  way  to  a  job.  The  Archbishop  heard  the  story  “with 


200 


A  rchbishop  L  aud. 


great  indignation.”  A  general  petition  of  the  trade,  and  the 
assistance  of  “  Mr.  Hyde,”  afterwards  Lord  Clarendon,  rectified 
the  abuse. 

“  The  Archbishop,”  says  Clarendon,  “  laid  down  one  prin¬ 
ciple  for  himself,  which  he  believed  would  much  advance  the 
King's  service — that  the  King’s  duties  being  provided  for,  and 
cheerfully  paid,  the  merchants  should  receive  all  the  countenance 
and  protection  from  the  King  that  they  could  expect.  He  was 
careful  that  what  accrued  of  burden  to  the  subject  should 
i  redound  to  the  benefit  of  the  Crown,  and  not  enrich  projectors 
at  the  charge  of  the  people.  This  vigilance  and  inclination  in 
the  Archbishop  opened  the  door  to  the  admission  of  any 
merchants  or  others  to  him,  who  gave  him  information  of  this 
kind ;  and  who  being  ready  to  pay  anything  to  the  King, 
desired  only  protection  from  private  oppressors.” 

Laud  carried  on  the  Commission  of  the  Treasury  for  a  year, 
and  got  acquainted  with  all  the  holes  and  corners  of  the  office  ; 
“  the  mysteries  and  secrets  of  it,  the  honest  advantages  which 
the  Lord  Treasurers  had  for  enriching  themselves  (to  the  value 
of  seven  thousand  pounds  a  year,  and  upwards),  as  I”  (we 
quote  Heylin)  “have  heard  from  his  own  mouth,  without  de¬ 
frauding  the  King  or  abusing  the  subject.”  “  He  had  observed 
that  divers  Treasurers,  of  late  years,  had  raised  themselves  from 
very  mean  and  private  fortunes  to  the  titles  and  estates  of 
earls  and  he  determined  to  have  a  Treasurer  who  would  “  not 
play  such  a  game” — a  man  “who  had  no  family  to  raise,  no 
wife  and  children  to  provide  for.”  Bishop  Juxon  did  not 
disappoint  his  patron ;  and  the  honourable  testimony  of  an 
enemy,  Lord  Falkland,  declared  in  Parliament,  “that  in  an 
unexpected  place  and  power  he  expressed  an  equal  moderation 
and  humility,  being  neither  ambitious  before  nor  proud  after, 
either  of  the  crosier  or  the  staff*.”  He  conducted  the  business 
of  the  Treasurership  with  great  ability,  and  gave  universal  satis¬ 
faction. 

The  appointment  of  Strafford  to  Ireland  brought  a  whole 
flood  of  public  business  upon  him  from  that  quarter.  Strafford’s 
scheming  prolific  mind  made  him  its  medium  and  advocate  at 
headquarters,  and  he  had  to  get  up  the  whole  multitudinous 


Archbishop  Laud. 


201 


arrangements  of  the  Irish  administration  in  order  to  put  them 
in  shape  and  favourable  aspect  before  Charles  and  the  govern¬ 
ment  at  home.  In  the  midst  of  enemies,  Irish  and  English, 
Court  treacheries  and  coolnesses,  Strafford  depended  solely  upon 
Laud,  and  no  one  other  support.  If  Laud  had  failed  him,  he 
must  have  gone.  They  were  mutually  necessary  for  each  other’s 
plans ;  and  while  Strafford  worked  hard  for  Laud  in  Ireland, 
Laud  worked  hard  for  Strafford  at  home ;  and  with  the  financial 
department  in  England  upon  him,  threw  himself  into  the  whole 
sea  of  Irish  finance  as  well,  and  entered  into  all  Strafford’s  new 
plans  of  revenue,  customs,  colonisations,  fisheries,  abolitions  of 
farms,  jobs,  monopolies,  linen-manufactories,  articles  for  taxa¬ 
tion,  patents  and  patentees,  coinage,  money- circulation,  subsi¬ 
dies,  parliamentary  management,  military  security,  viceroy 
ceremonial  and  etiquette,  and  the  world  of  questions  which 
issued  out  of  Strafford’s  creative  administration.  A  curious 
mixture  of  Church  and  State,  with  all  their  respective  ramifi¬ 
cations, — deaneries,  bishoprics,  stalls,  tithes,  commendams,  plu¬ 
ralities,  alienations,  frauds,  restoration  of  Church  spoils,  legal 
prosecution  of  the  spoilers,  buying  in  impropriations,  convo¬ 
cation,  articles,  canons,  Calvinism,  University  education,  the 
Provost  and  the  Primate,  and  their  disputes,  Bramhall,  Lesly, 
Bedell,  Usher— with  tobacco  and  tallow,  and  Cottington  and 
Court,  etc.  etc.,  meets  our  eye.  “  I  am  aweary,”  he  says  at  the 
beginning  of  a  letter ;  and  “  I  am  aweary,”  he  says  at  the  end 
of  a  letter.  “  I  am  heartily  aweary,” — “and  I  was  never  so 
busy  as  I  am  at  this  present.”  And  “  now  I  have  done  with 
your  long  letters and  “  let  me  not  have  your  long  letters 
again  just  now.” 

Sympathy,  cheerfulness,  and  affection,  howrever,  appear  in 
every  letter  ;  quiet  advice,  occasionally,  as  from  an  older,  though 
not  so  brilliant  a  head ;  numerous  hits  and  nicknames ;  sly 
raillery  sometimes  upon  his  correspondent  himself.  Strafford’s 
high  spirit,  sensitiveness,  enthusiastic  aspirings,  internal  dis¬ 
gusts,  he  quite  enters  into  and  tries  to  calm.  “  All  able,  and 
all  hearty,  and  all  running  one  way,  and  none  caring  for  any 
ends  so  that  the  King  be  served.” — Strafford.  “By  your  Lord¬ 
ship’s  leave,  a  branch  of  Plato’s  commonwealth  which  flourishes 


202 


Archbishop  Laud. 


at  this  day  nowhere  hut  in  Utopia.” — Laud.  A  side  hit  at 
Strafford’s  oratorical  propensities,  and  dashing  way  of  doing 
things :  “  Everybody  liked  your  carriage  and  discourse  to  the 
Council,  but  thought  it  too  long,  and  that  too  much  strength 
was  put  into  it.  But  you  see  ivliat  it  is  to  be  an  able  speaker .” 
A  hint  given  about  Strafford’s  prosecutions,  that  they  were 
doing  him  harm  :  “  Some  persons  whisper  against  your  pro¬ 
ceedings  in  Ireland  as  being  over-full  of  personal  prosecutions, 
and  instance  Lord  Wilmot,  Lord  St.  Albans,  etc.  I  know  that 
you  have  a  great  deal  more  resolution  in  you  than  to  decline 
any  service  for  the  barking  of  discontented  persons ;  and  yet, 
my  Lord,  if  you  could  find  a  way  to  do  all  these  services  and 
decline  these  storms,  it  would  be  excellent  well  thought  on.  I 
pray  your  Lordship  to  pardon  me  this  freedom,  which  I  brought 
with  me  into  your  friendship.”  Soothings  of  his  Court  dis¬ 
appointments  and  sense  of  Charles’s  neglect  come  in:  “You 
know  the  workings  of  a  court,”  and  “  these  things  cannot  be 
helped,”  and  “  a  king  is  prevented  by  circumstances  from 
appreciating  his  good  servants  as  he  ought and  “  to  reward 
aright  is  not  in  every  governor’s  skill  and  good  fortune.” 

Entire  weariness  of  business  has  a  burst  occasionally,  and 
a  good  hearty  laugh  in  the  middle  of  a  letter — the  subject, 
Strafford’s  gout,  on  which  he  strings  a  good-natured  hit  at  Ills 
friend’s  imperious  tendencies  :  “  I  see  you  conceal  your  infir¬ 
mities,  for  your  brother  tells  me  you  have  the  gout,  but  there’s 
not  a  word  of  it  in  your  letter.  This  ’tis  to  write  with  your 
fingers,  and  not  with  your  toes  :  had  you  been  to  write  with 
these,  I  should  have  heard  some  complaints,  or  discovered  it 
by  your  manner  of  writing.  I  promise  you,  you  can  make 
haste  that  can  get  the  gout  so  soon ;  I  thought  you  had  been 
contented  to  stay  till  you  had  been  nearer  threescore  first;  ’tis 
no  such  lovely  companion,  and  I  know  you  would  be  glad  to 
be  rid  of  it.  Well  now,  there’s  work  for  Dr.  Williams ;  and  I 
know  if  he  had  not  been  so  near  you,  you  would  have  sent  to 
me  for  my  counsel,  who  have  more  skill  in  these  things  than 
you  are  aware  of.  And  though  he  be  there,  I’ll  venture  to 
prescribe  for  you.  Take  heed  of  applying  any  medicine  to  it 
that  may  beat  it  back,  but  draw  it  out  into  public  as  much  as 


Archbishop  Laud. 


203 

you  can ;  and  while  you  have  so  good  an  advantage,  follow  it ; 
use  your  power  in  both  houses,  make  an  Act  of  Parliament 
against  it ;  that  if  ever  it  comes  to  lay  hold  of  you  again,  espe¬ 
cially  when  you  are  busy  in  the  Kings  service,  it  shall  incur 
your  high  displeasure,  and  be  expelled  the  castle,  so  soon  as 
ever  you  are  rid  of  it,  and  not  return  again,  under  pain  of  being 
endured  there  against  your  will.  Indeed,  I  much  marvel  how 
it  durst  venture  upon  you  in  Parliament-time,  and  verily  think 
it  would  hardly  have  been  so  bold  had  it  not  had  the  suffrages 
of  some  mutineers  in  the  house/’ 

In  going  through  Laud’s  whole  career  we  are  struck  not  so 
much  with  its  vigour  after  all,  as  with  its  magnitude  and  com¬ 
prehensiveness.  Some  characters  strike  immediately,  others 
progressively.  Crescit  eundo  applies  remarkably  to  some  men  : 
the  circle  widens,  the  space  unfolds  within  them.  A  narrow 
opening  conducts  into  the  interior,  and  a  want  of  room  is  felt 
at  first ;  a  moving  boundary  of  dusk  and  twilight  walls  you  in, 
and  seems  to  threaten  a  standstill  every  minute.  The  scene 
enlarges  with  exploring,  avenues  thicken,  and  paths  diverge ; 
a  forest  tract  insensibly  appears.  The  cathedral  area  and 
dimensions  disappoint  the  eye  at  first,  but  the  ground  expands 
with  stepping,  and  the  idea  of  size  and  vastness  comes  gradually, 
as  an  impression  produced  upon  the  internal  sense,  an  intel¬ 
lectual  shadow  upon  the  mind.  Physical  force  acts  either  by 
quick  blow  or  slow  pressure.  Power,  greatness,  talent,  either 
concentrate  themselves  in  particular  strokes,  or  cover  the 
ground  by  steady  advance  and  uniform  expansion.  Laud’s  was 
a  large  mind.  We  mean  that  largeness,  capacity,  dimension 
was  its  particular  characteristic,  as  distinguished  from  other 
kinds  of  greatness.  Scripture  talks  about  “  largeness  of  heart, 
even  as  the  sand  which  is  on  the  sea-shore.”  His  accessible¬ 
ness,  affability,  openness,  and  all  those  features  of  the  genuine 
public  character,  presence  of  mind,  attention  always  ready, 
ear  alive  and  willing  to  be  engaged  by  any  new-comer,  and 
absorbing  quietly  the  visitor  and  his  information,  the  man  and 
his  facts  together ;  his  powers  of  ab  extra  sympathy,  his  com¬ 
prehensive  friendships  and  alliances,  varied  tastes,  love  of 
learning,  wide,  liberal  patronage,  and  the  whole  fertile  and 


204 


Archbishop  Laud . 


diversified  industry  of  his  mind  brought  to  bear  on  the  one 
object  of  the  Church — all  this  ground  grows  upon  one.  Church 
and  Court,  and  all  their  ramifications — Scotch  Church,  Irish 
Church,  discipline,  doctrine,  Strafford,  the  Universities,  the 
Treasurership — grow  upon  one.  An  idea  of  extent  comes  upon 
one — an  idea  which  we  are  afraid  has  suggested  itself  to  our 
readers  already — and  one  mind’s  arch  seems  to  cover  a  good 
space.  The  variety  of  the  scene  mingles  indeed  with  a  sort  of 
haze  and  gloom  below,  with  underground  toil  and  pressure,  and 
the  secret  chamber  and  the  private  meeting  and  mysterious 
cells  and  corners.  Shades  come  over  the  scene,  and  the  air 
waves  with  dreamy  hues,  and  the  purple  and  the  gold,  the 
Court  splendour  and  Episcopal  throne,  gleam  through  rolling 
vapour  and  subtle  intersection,  and  we  are  in  an  intricate 
complex  interior,  a  labyrinth  and  subterranean  domain  of 
mind. 

Homer  has  devoted  one  of  his  poems  to  a  description  of 
the  union  of  the  political  character  with  feeling  and  nature. 
Accomplished  statesmanship,  art,  and  penetration,  subtlety, 
fertility,  experience,  mark  pre-eminently  the  hero  of  the 
Odyssey.  He  knows  human  nature,  human  ways,  and  is  con¬ 
versant  with  courts  and  cities, — IIoWwv  S*  avOpwirwy  ISev 
aarea  kclL  voov  eyvco’  men  and  minds  are  his  sphere ;  he  is 
acquainted  with  man,  has  traversed  the  human  world,  and 
come  into  genuine  contact  with  the  race.  He  shows  its  re¬ 
sults  in  a  temper  of  courtesy,  moderation,  endurance ;  he  has 
suffered  much,  and  is  ready  to  suffer  more.  Simplest  heart 
and  affectionateness  unite  with  political  talent,  and  the  sweet¬ 
ness  of  home  and  kindred  follows  the  subtle  practical  mind 
over  the  earth,  overpowering  it  with  purest  longings  and  devo¬ 
tion.  The  image  of  flourishing,  peaceful  Ithaca  is  always 
before  his  mind,  and  crowns  the  journey’s  end;  he  feeds  on 
past  reminiscences,  and  lives  on  the  hope  of  seeing  the  past 
once  more  present.  The  Odyssean  type  is  peculiarly  illustra¬ 
tive  of  Laud’s  mind — human  life,  the  world,  mankind  its  sphere  ; 
men  and  minds,  minds  and  men  ;  man  en  masse,  and  man  the 
individual, — his  formidable  numbers,  and  his  still  more  formid¬ 
able  units, — the  subject-matter  of  his  labour,  endurance,  man- 


Archbishop  Laud . 


205 


agement,  experience,  skill.  Solid  experience,  ethical  skill — 
whoever  really  possesses  it — most  sobering,  intoning,  moulding 
to  the  mind ;  fruit  of  self-discipline,  height  of  mental  accom¬ 
plishment  and  art,  which  is  all  but  virtue  !  His  long  journey 
through  courts  and  cities  pursued  a  bright  image  of  the  Church, 
a  visionary  Ithaca,  which  fled  further  and  further  from  him  as 
he  seemed  to  approach  it,  till  a  black  cloud  stood  at  last  in  its 
place  and  disclosed  a  scaffold. 

Laud  was  a  genuine  priest — the  priest  in  the  political 
atmosphere.  That  love  of  his  order,  that  partiality  for  priestly 
celibacy,  show  the  priest.  Some  over-free  speeches  of  his  on 
the  point  of  celibacy  got  him  into  a  scrape,  and  people  were 
getting  alarmed,  when  he  suddenly  displayed  himself  in  a  very 
marked  way  at  the  marriage  of  one  of  his  chaplains,  and  quieted 
suspicion.  We  see  a  corner  of  that  priestly  mixture  of  subtlety 
and  humility  in  him ;  that  mode  of  managing  which  is  popu¬ 
larly  accused  of  being  imperious  and  underhand  at  the  same 
time.  We  describe  it  by  what  the  superficial  popular  accuser 
calls  it,  for  the  sake  of  convenience,  without  pausing  to  say 
what  it  really  is,  which  would  take  us  too  much  time. 

There  is  an  observable  tendency  in  him  perpetually  to  dis¬ 
claim  his  own  influence,  and  throw  the  originating  character 
upon  others.  He  acts  under  a  shield,  and  has  an  influence  in 
motion  about  him,  which  he  set  moving  in  the  first  instance, 
but  just  does  not  do  the  thing  itself.  And  a  peculiar  subtlety 
of  mind  enables  to  say  in  the  case  of  things  that  he  certainly 
exceedingly  wished  to  be  done,  and  certainly  had  a  great  deal 
to  do  with,  that  somehow  or  other  he  did  not  do  them.  The 
Regale  and  the  High  Court  of  Commission  are  his  great  Ajacian 
shield  in  the  first  instance ;  and  although  it  was  perfectly  well 
known  that  he  did  everything  that  was  done  there,  he  keeps 
up  the  form  of  an  amusing  ostentatious  humility  throughout, 
in  a  jealous  reference  of  everything  to  the  Board,  of  whose  per¬ 
fect  independence  and  mere  voluntary  motion  he  tolerates  no 
suspicion.  He  is  even  exceedingly  concerned  at  some  of  their 
acts  on  particular  occasions,  especially  so  in  the  case  of  his 
great  opponent  the  Lord  Keeper  Williams.  Live  several  times 
does  he  go  down  on  his  knees  to  the  King  to  beg  for  leniency 


206 


Archbishop  Laud. 


to  the  Lord  Keeper,  but  his  Majesty  is  resolute,  inexorable  to 
entreaty  ;  the  Lord  Keeper  goes  to  the  wall.  It  is  a  singular 
fact  that  a  certain  shade  of  intricacy  and  subtlety  does  hover 
around  a  particular  class  of  characters,  and  that  most  unques¬ 
tionably  high  and  disinterested  men  exhibit  themselves  in  a 
colour  which  to  the  mass  must  inevitably  have  the  look  of 
simple  deceit.  We  hit  against  the  corners  of  a  casuistical 
world,  and  catch  a  puzzling  glimpse  of  a  very  shadowy  inter¬ 
sected  interior.  An  internal  distinction  enables  Laud  to  be 
first  the  rigorous  prosecutor,  and  then  the  compassionate  inter¬ 
cessor,  and  separates  what  his  evidence  does  from  what  he  him¬ 
self  does  against  Williams.  The  evidence  is  indeed  too  strong 
for  the  intercession,  but  he  cannot  help  certain  facts  telling. 
Lie  lets  the  trial  and  the  case  have  their  own  full  swing,  but 
he  stands  outside  of  it,  and  has  his  own  attitude  for  himself.  A 
man  with  a  good  substratum  of  power  finds  that  other  persons 
do  things  for  him,  and  sees  his  own  wishes  carried  out  in 
advance,  and  operates  as  a  kind  of  invisible  spring  to  a  circle 
of  action  around  him.  The  High  Commission  Court  was  in 
the  unconscious  habit  of  obedience  to  Laud,  while  Laud  was 
modestly  declining  even  the  exercise  of  his  own  vote  at  times, 
whenever  he  might  be  considered  a  personally  interested  party. 
Laud  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  Scotch  Liturgy,  and  he  had 
nothing  to  do  with  theological  books  that  came  out.  The  Scotch 
bishops  did  one  thing,  his  chaplains  did  another,  the  High 
Commission  another,  the  King  another.  He  only  does  nothing 
at  all,  and  sees  all  the  world  in  motion,  he  himself  unaccount¬ 
ably  quiescent.  His  examination  at  his  trial  is  a  perfect 
specimen  of  this  species  of  casuistry ;  it  proceeds  on  the  theory 
that  he  has  a  right  to  say  what  the  opposite  side  cannot  legally 
prove  against  him ;  that  he  has  a  right  to  the  advantages  of  a 
position  to  say — that  is  true  as  far  as  you  are  concerned,  you 
have  no  right  to  question  me  further  than  the  bare  outside 
goes ;  I  give  you  the  outside,  and  take  it,  and  make  what  you 
can  out  of  it. 

What  mixes  oddly,  however,  with  this  cautious,  subtle 
habit  of  mind  is  the  impatience  and  irritableness  which  is 
charged  to  him.  We  do  not  believe  all  that  is  said  of  him 


Archbishop  Laud. 


207 


here,  but  he  does  seem  never  to  have  got  over  a  natural  defect 
he  had  in  the  shape  of  an  excessive  and  morbid  sensitiveness. 
He  could  often  calm  it,  and  often  not,  and  perpetually  struggled 
with  it.  A  hard  experience  never  endowed  him  with  absolute 
political  temper  and  coolness,  and  a  bad  voice  and  some  defect 
of  manner  did  him  injustice  on  this  head.  Nature  does  not 
allow  some  people  to  express  themselves  truly,  but  refracts 
what  they  do  through  some  angular  or  rough  medium.  We 
are  referring  here  principally  to  Clarendon’s  account  of  Laud. 

A  word  about  Clarendon.  We  can  trust  Clarendon’s  de¬ 
scription  of  one  of  the  regular  class  of  statesmen  and  men  of 
the  world  ;  he  draws  it  exactly,  but  he  does  not  appreciate 
higher  characters,  and  makes  mistakes.  He  sets  down  Laud 
as  a  precipitate,  headstrong  person,  when  the  truth  simply  is 
that  he  does  not  enter  into  ends  and  objects  he  was  contend¬ 
ing  for,  and  thinks  that  unimportant  which  Laud  thought 
important.  The  charge  of  precipitancy  over  and  over  again, 
indeed,  is  simply  a  criticism  on  ends,  and  not  on  means,  and 
only  expresses  a  difference  as  to  first  principles  between  the 
critic  and  the  person  he  judges.  Strafford,  in  the  same  way, 
he  obviously  does  not  in  the  least  understand,  and  is  as  unfair 
to  him  as  possible,  simply  from  not  understanding  him.  With 
all  deference  to  Clarendon’s  greatness  in  his  own  department 
of  mind,  he  has  much  narrowness  and  pedantry. 

Clarendon  patronises  Laud  rather  amusingly.  He  admires 
the  “  splendour  of  his  piety,”  and  feels  grateful  for  his  patron¬ 
age  and  the  business  he  got  him  as  a  lawyer  in  early  life.  We 
hear  how  Mr.  Hyde  “  first  came  to  be  known  to  the  Archbishop, 
who  ever  afterwards  used  him  very  kindly,  and  spoke  well  of 
him  on  all  occasions,  and  took  particular  notice  of  him  when 
he  came  as  counsel  in  any  causes  depending  at  the  Council 
board,  insomuch  that  Mr.  Hyde  (who  well  knew  how  to  culti¬ 
vate  these  advantages)  was  used  with  more  countenance  by  all 
the  judges  in  Westminster  Hall,  and  the  eminent  practisers, 
than  was  usually  given  to  men  of  his  years ;  so  that  he  grew 
every  day  in  practice,  of  which  he  had  as  much  as  he  desired.” 
The  young  lawyer,  in  return  for  the  Archbishop’s  patronage, 
gives  him  the  benefit  of  his  good  advice,  and  a  lecture.  “  The 


208 


Archbishop  Laud. 


greatest  want  the  Archbishop  had  was  of  a  true  friend,  who 
would  seasonably  tell  him  of  his  infirmities/’  Mr.  Hyde  sup¬ 
plies  that  deficiency. 

Mr.  Hyde’s  free  expostulation  with  the  Archbishop  : — “  He 
found  the  Archbishop  early  walking  in  the  garden,  who  re¬ 
ceived  him,  according  to  his  custom,  very  graciously,  and  con¬ 
tinuing  his  walk,  asked  him,  ‘  What  good  news  from  the 
country?’  To  which  he  answered  there  was  none  good ;  the 
people  were  universally  discontented,  and  (which  troubled  him 
most)  that  many  people  spoke  extreme  ill  of  his  Grace  as  the 
cause  of  all  that  was  amiss.  He  replied  that  he  was  sorry  for 
it ;  he  knew  he  did  not  deserve  it,  and  that  he  must  not  give 
over  serving  the  King  and  the  Church  to  please  the  people. 
Mr.  Hyde  told  him  he  thought  he  need  not  lessen  his  zeal  for 
either,  and  that  it  grieved  him  to  find  persons  of  the  best  con¬ 
ditions,  and  who  loved  both  King  and  Church,  exceedingly 
indevoted  to  him,  complaining  of  his  manner  of  treating  them 
when  they  had  occasion  to  resort  to  him,  and  then  named  two 
persons  of  the  most  interest  and  credit  in  Wiltshire  who  had 
that  summer  attended  the  Council  board ;  that  all  the  Lords 
present  used  them  with  great  courtesy,  and  that  he  alone  spake 
sharply  to  them  ;  and  one  of  them,  supposing  that  somebody 
had  done  him  ill  offices,  went  the  next  morning  to  Lambeth  to 
present  service  to  him,  and  to  discover,  if  he  could,  what  mis¬ 
representation  had  been  made  of  him ;  that  after  he  had 
attended  very  long  he  was  admitted  to  speak  with  his  Grace, 
who  scarce  hearing  him,  sharply  answered  him  that  f  he  had  no 
time  for  compliments,’  which  put  the  other  much  out  of  coun¬ 
tenance  ;  and  that  this  kind  of  behaviour  was  the  discourse  of 
all  companies  of  persons  of  quality. 

“  He  (Laud)  heard  the  relation  very  patiently  and  atten¬ 
tively,  and  discoursed  over  every  particular  with  all  imaginable 
condescension  ;  and  said,  with  evident  show  of  trouble,  that  ‘  he 
was  very  unfortunate  to  be  so  ill  understood,  that  he  meant 
very  well,  that  by  an  imperfection  of  nature,  which  he  said 
often  troubled  him,  he  might  deliver  the  resolution  of  the 
Council  in  such  a  tone  and  with  a  sharpness  of  voice  that 
made  men  believe  he  was  angry  when  there  was  no  such  thing. 


Archbishop  Laud. 


209 


That  he  dicl  well  remember  that  one  of  them  (who  was  a  person 
of  honour)  came  afterwards  to  him,  at  a  time  when  he  was 
shut  up  about  an  affair  of  importance  which  required  his  full 
thoughts,  but  that  as  soon  as  he  heard  of  the  others  being 
without,  he  sent  for  him,  himself  going  into  the  next  room,  and 
received  him  very  kindly,  as  he  thought ;  and  supposing  that 
he  came  about  business,  asked  what  his  business  was,  and  the 
other  answering  that  he  had  no  business,  but  continuing  his 
address  with  some  ceremony,  he  had  indeed  said  that  he  had 
no  time  for  compliments,  but  he  did  not  think  he  went  out  of 
the  room  in  that  manner/ 

“  He  was  well  contented  to  hear  Mr.  Hyde  reply  very  freely 
on  the  subject,”  who  said,  “  He  observed  that  the  gentlemen 
had  too  much  reason  for  the  report  they  made,  and  he  did  not 
wonder  they  had  been  much  troubled  with  his  carriage  toward 
them ;  that  he  did  exceedingly  wish  that  he  would  more 
reserve  his  passion,  and  that  he  would  treat  persons  of  honour 
and  quality  and  interest  in  their  country  with  more  courtesy 
and  condescension.  He  said,  smiling,  that  he  could  only 
undertake  for  his  heart ;  that  he  had  very  good  meaning ;  for 
his  tongue,  he  could  not  undertake  that  he  should  not  some¬ 
times  speak  more  hastily  and  sharply  than  he  should  do  (which 
oftentimes  he  was  sorry  and  reprehended  himself  for),  and  in  a 
tone  which  might  be  liable  to  misinterpretation  with  them  who 
were  not  well  acquainted  with  him.  After  this  free  discourse 
Mr.  Hyde  ever  found  himself  more  graciously  received  by  him, 
and  treated  with  more  familiarity,  upon  which  he  always  con¬ 
cluded  that  if  the  Archbishop  had  had  any  true  friend  who 
could  in  proper  seasons  have  dealt  frankly  with  him,  he  would 
not  only  have  received  it  very  well,  but  have  profited  by  it.” 

Mr.  Hyde  is  obviously  a  very  sagacious  adviser,  and  Mr. 
Hyde  is  very  well  satisfied  with  the  impression  which  his 
lecture  makes  on  the  Archbishop — an  impression,  however,  we 
will  venture  to  say,  which  would  not  have  been  produced  quite 
to  the  extent  to  which  it  was  if  the  Archbishop  had  not  fixed 
liis  eye  on  Mr.  Hyde  as  a  person  who  might  be  made  consider¬ 
able  use  of  some  day,  and  felt  that  one  avenue  to  Mr.  Hyde’s 
affections  was  to  listen  patiently  to  an  edifying  prose  from 

M.E.-I.]  0 


2  IO 


Archbishop  Laud. 


him.  The  young  barrister  judicially  lecturing  the  Archbishop, 
and  the  Archbishop’s  acquiescence  in  the  censure,  the  mixture 
of  genuine  humility  and  eye  cast  downwards,  with  the  side 
glance  of  the  statesman,  is  a  characteristic  scene. 

Large,  subtle,  knotty  mind,  that  from  your  deep  corner 
wielded  a  Court,  and  caught  its  great  men,  one  after  another, 
and  made  them  know  and  feel  you  individually,  through  an 
outward  unkind  mould  of  nature,  and  turned  them  to  your 
purpose  !  The  man  of  the  world  with  the  sensitiveness  of  a 
child  ;  the  courtly  animus  struggling  through  physical  defects 
of  manner ;  caution,  fire ;  acuteness,  simplicity  :  Laud’s  char¬ 
acter  is  a  whole,  though  a  complex  one. 

We  are  approaching  the  end  of  Laud’s  career.  The  rejection 
of  the  Liturgy  in  Scotland,  and  the  whole  scene  accompanying 
it — a  raging  crowd,  a  bishop  assaulted  in  the  very  church,  and 
obliged  to  escape  for  his  life ;  a  conspiracy  of  nobles,  and  the 
Solemn  League  and  Covenant  erected  by  scheming  heads  upon 
the  passions  of  the  mob,  had  a  fatal  appearance.  The  watch¬ 
word  raised,  the  nucleus  formed,  hundreds  flocked  in.  A 
resentful  nobility,  whose  pride  Laud  had  offended,  joined 
them  in  England,  and  secret  communications  were  established 
between  the  two  countries.  Nobles,  gentry,  and  great  men  of 
all  kinds,  the  Democrats  and  the  Conservatives  of  the  day, 
both  of  them — all  who  disliked  the  Church  and  Church  power, 
chimed  in  openly  and  secretly,  either  with  their  opposition  or 
their  half-support;  preachers  assumed  fresh  impetus ;  pulpits 
were  rostrums,  congregations  mobs ;  and  a  whole  world  was  in 
motion  against  Laud,  Strafford,  and  the  Church  Cabinet. 

There  is  something  remarkable  in  the  way  in  which  Laud’s 
animation  seems  to  grow  as  he  gets  older.  A  reverse  process 
to  the  usual  one  tamed  his  spirit  in  the  first  part  of  his  life, 
and  raised  it  in  the  latter  :  and  we  are  surprised,  when  we 
come  to  the  Strafford  correspondence,  and  see  the  fire  that 
there  is  in  him.  “  Haughty  and  fiery,”  according  to  Whitlock ; 
nice  sweet  lady’s  man,  according  to  good  Mrs.  Maxwell,  in 
whose  husband’s  house  he  lodged  before  his  trial ;  a  striking 
mixture  of  both  features  compose  the  old  man.  The  year 
1640,  which  ushered  in  the  Scotch  Bebellion,  and  concluded 


Archbishop  Laucl. 


2  1 1 


with  his  own  imprisonment  in  the  Tower,  found  him  as  active 
and  as  ubiquitous  as  in  any  year  of  his  life.  As  one  of  the 
triumviri  with  Strafford  and  Hamilton,  which  had  the  Scotch 
war  committed  to  them,  he  had  business  and  anxiety  enough 
in  that  quarter.  Not  one  fragment  of  his  other  business 
gives  way,  not  one  sign  of  remissness  or  flagging,  not  a  falter¬ 
ing  step  or  a  failing  look  appear.  He  is  all  alive,  and  acts 
with  the  full  vigour  and  spirit  of  his  whole  career,  till  his 
career  itself  stops  ;  till  he  comes  to  a  dead  wall,  and  is  locked 
up  in  the  house  of  the  Black  Bod.  From  the  cabinet  of  Scotch 
business  proceed  letters  to  the  University  of  Oxford  about 
putting  down  the  Westminster  Supper,  and  a  scolding  letter  to 
the  Vice-Chancellor  for  not  “  suppressing  taverns  and  ale¬ 
houses.”  Mr.  Bagshawe,  of  the  Middle  Temple,  who  gives 
authority  to  the  Courts  in  Westminster  over  the  “  Courts 
Christian,”  has  a  summary  stop  given  to  his  lectures,  and 
“  away  goes  Bagshawe  out  of  town,  accompanied  with  forty  or 
fifty  horse,  who  seemed  to  be  of  the  same  faction  and  affections,” 
Convocation  meets  in  the  very  thick  of  the  storm,  and  con¬ 
tinues  its  meeting  after  the  dissolution  of  Parliament;  and 
the  isolated  ecclesiastical  body  daring  to  show  its  ecclesiastical 
unparliamentary  existence,  draws  the  whole  jealousy  of  the 
nation  upon  it ;  and  the  House  sits  with  the  Middlesex  train- 
bands  to  guard  it  from  the  fury  of  the  mob.  Canons  pass, 
and  a  series  of  discussions  go  on.  Bishop  Hall’s  Episcopacy, 
written  for  the  Scotch  emergency,  comes  under  his  review,  and 
he  suggests  the  line  and  ground  to  take.  All  his  departments 
and  activities  go  on. 

Laud  was  not  deficient  in  the  prophetic  instinct.  He  had 
known  long  ago  which  way  things  were  going ;  and  the  cloud 
which  he  saw  gathering  over  the  English  Church  at  Bishop 
Montague’s  trial  had  never  left  his  eye.  A  singular  presenti¬ 
ment  of  his  own  fate  appears  even  years  before,  in  one  of 
those  strange  and  vague  movements  of  his  mind  in  the  Diary, 
where  it  occurs  to  him  that  he  is  always  coming  into  contact 
with  St.  John  Baptist’s  Day.  “  Of  no  ill  omen,  I  hope.  While 
I  was  intent  at  prayer,  I  know  not  how,  it  came  strongly  into 
my  mind.”  The  close  of  his  course  comes  now  ushered  in  with 


212 


Archbishop  Laud. 


dreams,  and  he  dreams  that  he  sees  his  father,  and  asks  his 
father  how  long  he  should  stay  ;  and  that  his  father  made  this 
answer,  that  he  should  stay  till  he  had  him  along  with  him. 
He  comes  into  his  study,  and  sees  his  picture  “  fallen  on  the 
floor,  and  lying  flat  on  its  face.”  Melancholy,  and  activity 
under  it ;  the  power  of  ever  acting  before  a  blank  and  ambi¬ 
guity,  of  throwing  himself  into  the  process  as  such,  and  filling 
space,  are  characteristic  of  Laud.  A  man’s  career  is  an 
existence  in  itself,  a  solid  portion  cut  out  of  the  world  of 
human  mind  and  will  :  it  lives  apart  from  what  results  of  it, 
and  has  a  realm  of  its  own,  which  no  fate  can  interfere  with, 
in  all  the  space  between  its  beginning  and  its  end. 

Parliament  met  on  the  3d  of  November  1640.  “A  letter 
was  wrote  to  the  Archbishop,  advertising  that  the  Parliament 
of  Henry  vm.,  which  destroyed  the  privileges  of  the  clergy, 
and  dissolved  the  abbeys  and  religious  houses,  was  begun  on 
the  3d  of  November,  and  therefore  that,  for  good  luck’s  sake, 
he  would  move  the  King  to  respite  the  first  sitting  of  it  for  a 
day  or  two  longer.”  However,  it  met  on  the  unlucky  day. 
On  the  18tli  of  December,  Hollis,  after  a  vehement  debate  on 
the  Canons  of  the  late  Convocation,  which  were  declared  to  be 
“  against  the  King’s  prerogative,  and  the  fundamental  laws  of 
the  realm,”  impeached  him  in  the  name  of  the  Commons  of 
England  of  treason.  He  was  committed  to  the  charge  of 
Maxwell,  the  Usher  of  the  P>lack  Pod,  and  remained  ten  weeks 
in  his  house  ;  Mrs.  Maxwell  charmed  with  him,  and  “  talking 
of  him  to  her  gossips.”  From  Maxwell’s  he  was  removed  to 
the  Tower,  amidst  a  “  railing  rabble,”  who  accompanied  him  to 
the  very  gates. 

Mobs  had  been  rife  lately,  and  springing  up  at  a  moment’s 
warning ;  they  had  attacked  Lambeth,  had  torn  up  the  seats  of 
the  High  Commission  Court  at  St.  Paul’s.  Laud  was  now 
under  the  special  surveillance  of  a  mixed  mob  of  Brownists, 
Anabaptists,  and  “  London  apprentices,”  who  invariably  accom¬ 
panied  him  to  and  from  the  Tower,  saw  him  enter  Westminster 
Hall  for  his  day’s  trial,  and  saw  him  safe  in  the  Tower  gates 
again ;  and  an  impertinent,  staring,  multitudinous  eye  seemed 
always  upon  him  :  a  specimen  of  an  unwelcome,  uncongenial 


Archbishop  Laud. 


213 


companionship,  which  almost  reminds  one  of  some  of  the  poet’s 
punishments  in  the  infernal  regions — those  curious  inflictions 
which  are  made  expressly  to  fit  the  individuals  themselves.  The 
Danaidm  had  their  buckets,  and  Sisyphus  his  large  stone,  and 
Laud  his  mob. 

Libels  and  ballads  against  him  were  sung  up  and  down  the 
streets,  with  pictures  of  him  in  a  cage,  and  “  fastened  to  a  post 
by  a  chain.”  They  enlivened  taverns  and  alehouses  ;  and  the 
“  drunkards  made  songs  upon  me,”  he  says ;  “  God  of  His 
mercy  forgive  the  misguided  people.” 

The  Tower  had  its  own  internal  persecutors  ;  and  preachers 
in  the  chapel  soothed  his  misfortunes  with  the  special  applica¬ 
tion  of  the  text  to  him,  “  Curse  ye  Meroz,  saith  the  angel  of  the 
Lord.”  One  Mr.  Joslyn  preached,  “with  a  vehemence  becom¬ 
ing  Bedlam  :  the  women  and  the  boys  stood  up  in  the  church 
to  see  how  I  would  bear  it.  I  humbly  thank  God  for  my 
patience.”  Puritan  ministers  came  to  call  on  him,  and  ask 
him  “  whether  he  had  repented  Mr.  Wells,  a  New  England 
minister,  boisterously  demanding  of  him  whether  he  had  not 
repented  of  once  upon  a  time  suspending  him  (Mr.  Wells)  in 
particular.  “  I  knew  him  not  till  he  told  me  he  was  suspended 
by  me,  when  I  was  Bishop  of  London,  and  he  then  a  minister 
in  Essex.  I  told  him  if  he  were  suspended  it  was  doubtless 
according  to  law.  Then  upon  a  little  further  speech,  I  recalled 
the  man  to  my  remembrance,  and  what  care  I  took  at  London 
then  to  recall  him  from  some  of  his  turbulent  ways,  but 
all  in  vain ;  and  now  he  inferred,  out  of  the  good  words  I 
then  gave  him,  that  I  suspended  him  against  my  conscience.” 

The  death  of  Strafford  deprived  him  of  his  greatest  friend — 
the  only  person  who  had  fully  sympathised  and  acted  with 
him.  Laud  felt  the  blow,  and  knew  he  stood  entirely  alone  in 
the  world  when  he  was  gone.  Hopelessness  and  separation, 
and  certainty  of  never  coming  together  again,  are  a  different 
thing  from  a  friend’s  death  after  all.  Laud  was  perfectly  un¬ 
manned  by  Strafford’s  death.  They  were  not  allowed  to  see 
one  another  in  the  Tower :  but  Strafford  sent  to  the  Lieutenant 
the  night  before  his  execution,  to  ask  for  leave  that  once.  It 
was  refused.  “  Then  ask  the  Archbishop,”  he  said,  “  to  lend 


Archbishop  Laud. 


214 

me  his  prayers  this  night,  and  give  me  his  blessing  when  I  go 
abroad  to-morrow,  and  be  at  his  window,  that  by  my  last 
farewell  I  may  give  him  thanks  for  this,  and  all  other  his 
former  favours.”  Laud  replied  that  he  could  promise  the  first, 
but  could  not  answer  for  the  second ;  “  he  feared  his  weakness 
and  passion  would  not  lend  him  eyes  to  behold  his  last  de¬ 
parture/’  He  made  the  attempt  however,  and  did  come  up  to 
his  window  the  next  morning,  where  Strafford  stood  waiting 
for  him  on  his  way  to  execution ;  but  could  not  do  more  than 
just  lift  up  his  hands  in  the  attitude  of  blessing,  and  fainted. 
The  heroic  character  of  Strafford,  for  all  the  cautions,  and 
softeners,  and  bits  of  humour  with  which  Laud  attacks  him  on 
it  in  his  letters,  was  deeply  loved ;  and  his  fondness  for  it 
shows  itself  in  his  very  hits  and  laughs  at  it.  He  gave  up  all 
hope  for  himself  from  this  time,  and  expected  his  end  as  a 
matter  of  time,  adding,  “  that  he  hoped,  by  God’s  assistance,  and 
his  own  innocency,  that  when  he  came  to  his  own  execution, 
which  he  daily  longed  for,  the  world  would  perceive  that  he 
had  been  more  sensible  of  Lord  Strafford’s  loss  than  he  was  of 
his  own.”  A  characteristic  sensitiveness  makes  him  half  find 
fault  with  himself  for  his  emotions,  and  for  the  appearance 
“  of  effeminacy  and  unbecoming  weakness  ”  there  was  in 
“  sinking  down  in  that  manner.” 

The  Great  Rebellion  was  now  set  in ;  both  sides  were  in 
arms ;  and  Laud  heard,  from  his  confinement  in  the  midst  of 
the  enemy’s  camp,  the  distant  news  of  engagements  in  the 
North.  Under  the  new  sway  of  Parliament,  he  saw  one  rapid 
ending  of  all  he  had  done.  Parliament  was  in  possession  of 
headquarters  in  the  metropolis,  and  wTas  changing  things  fast. 
He  saw,  one  by  one,  every  piece  of  ecclesiastical  reform  dis¬ 
placed  again,  Calvinism  and  Presbyterianism  triumphant,  and 
the  work  of  a  life  apparently  come  to  nothing.  He  could  only 
sit  patiently  in  his  prison,  and  hear  of  one  act  of  subversion 
after  another.  The  House  of  Commons  managed  the  Church  : 
Williams,  in  full  sunshine  again,  went  about  with  a  train  of 
bishops,  flattered  and  flattering,  and  the  oracle  of  Parliament : 
and  a  committee  of  twelve  met  in  his  lodgings,  and  planned 
alterations  in  the  Liturgy.  Mobs  shouting  “  No  bishops  !  No 


Archbishop  Laud. 


2I5 


bishops  !  ”  paraded  the  streets.  Parliament  echoed  the  cry, 
and  passed  a  bill  depriving  the  bishops  of  their  votes  in  the 
House  of  Lords.  “  That  struck  proud  Canterbury  to  the  heart/’ 
somebody  said.  The  churches  and  cathedrals  suffered  miser¬ 
able  profanation  from  the  Puritan  troops.  Westminster  Abbey 
was  assaulted  by  a  London  crowd,  and  had  to  be  stoutly  de¬ 
fended  by  the  “  scholars  ;  ”  and  the  hatred  of  the  Church,  which 
his  administration  had  for  years  with  difficulty  kept  under, 
broke  loose  everywhere,  and  made  up  for  its  past  confine¬ 
ment. 

In  1643  a  motley  mixture  of  Lords,  Commons,  and  ministers, 
Episcopal,  Presbyterian,  and  Independent,  sat  under  the  name 
of  the  Westminster  Assembly;  and  from  within  the  Abbey 
walls,  where  they  held  their  sitting,  issued  the  Directory.  A 
bargain  was  struck  with  the  Scotch  Covenanters  (whose  assist¬ 
ance  to  stem  the  Royal  successes  in  the  North  became  necessary), 
through  the  medium  of  Gillespie,  Henderson,  and  other  leading 
ministers.  The  Covenanting  interest  got,  in  return  for  its  aid, 
a  representation  in  the  Assembly,  with  a  prospect  of  a  share  of 
the  bishoprics  and  Church  spoil ;  and  a  confederacy  of  Scotch 
and  English,  and  a  compact  for  the  religious  uniformity  of  both 
countries,  were  cemented  with  the  pledge  that  Laud  should  be 
brought  to  trial. 

A  long,  tedious,  and  exhausting  ordeal  was  now  to  be 
undergone  before  he  could  be  allowed  to  die.  He  entered  on 
it  with  a  vigour  and  spirit  equal  to  that  of  any  period  of  his 
administration;  and  the  mind  accustomed  to  energy  was  literally 
unable  to  do  anything  feebly.  His  acuteness  simulates  the  full 
power  of  hope  :  and  an  inherent  habit  of  self-supporting  action, 
and  independence  of  expectation,  bears  him  along.  A  theory 
of  what  he  should  do  for  the  sake  of  the  look  to  the  world  at 
large,  and  a  sensitive  fear  of  seeming  to  give  way,  and  discredit 
his  cause,  comes  in ;  the  feeling  which  enters  into  the  expres¬ 
sion  we  have  just  quoted  of  his  after  Strafford’s  death,  which 
enters  much  into  his  prayers,  the  nervousness  of  a  religious 
mind,  as  if  it  were  wrong  to  be  weak  before  the  enemy,  and 
allow  him  a  too  easy  triumph  and  exaltation, — ■“  lest  he  be  too 
proud.” 


2 1 6  A  rchbishop  Laud. 

The  trial  began  in  November  1643,  and  went  on  to  the 
October  of  the  next  year ;  and  it  brought  the  whole  of  a  long 
public  life,  and  an  administration  in  Church  and  State,  under 
review,  from  the  proceedings  in  High  Commission  and  Star 
Chamber  down  to  the  most  casual  words  which  dropped  from 
him. 

The  tribunal  assumed  a  theological  character,  and  questioned 
him  about  his  language  respecting  the  altar,  the  priesthood,  the 
consecrated  elements ;  about  his  alterations  in  churches, 
Church  ceremonies,  pictures,  images,  crucifixes,  painted  windows; 
the  books  he  had  on  his  table ;  the  pictures  he  had  on  his 
walls  ;  his  private  conversations  ;  expressions  let  fall  about  the 
Church  ;  his  hopes  and  fears ;  his  theological  friends  ;  his  dis¬ 
posal  of  patronage,  and  men  whom  he  had  given  bishoprics 
and  deaneries  and  King’s-chaplainships  to. 

One  article  is  remarkable,  which  charges  him  with  designs 
upon  the  power  of  the  Crown,  and  wishing  to  deprive  the 
Crown  of  its  great  prerogative  of  Church  control.  The  Court 
shows  its  animus  :  it  has  no  objection  to  Crown  prerogative,  if 
it  will  only  ally  itself  with  them ;  the  Church  is  what  it  dis¬ 
likes,  and  what  it  fears.  For  the  powers  of  the  Crown,  as  of 
State  against  Church,  they  are  ready  to  stand  up  ;  they  will 
retain,  with  scrupulous  jealousy,  every  prerogative  of  it  that 
goes  in  that  direction  ;  they  are  loyal  men  then,  and  can  talk 
of  desire  to  support  the  Crown,  and  established  porver,  and 
dislike  of  innovation.  “  He  hath  traitorously  assumed  to  him¬ 
self,”  says  Article  VI.,  “  a  papal  and  tyrannical  power,  both  in 
ecclesiastical  and  temporal  matters,  over  his  Majesty’s  subjects 
in  the  realm  of  England,  to  the  disinherison  of  the  Crown, 
dishonour  of  his  Majesty,  and  derogation  of  supreme  authority 
in  ecclesiastical  matters.  And  the  said  Archbishop  claims  the 
King’s  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction,  as  incident  to  his  Episcopal 
and  Archiepiscopal  office  in  this  kingdom,  and  doth  deny  the 
same  to  be  derived  from  the  Crown  of  England  ;  which  he  hath 
accordingly  exercised  to  the  high  contempt  of  his  Royal  Majesty, 
and  to  the  destruction  of  divers  of  the  King’s  liege  people  in 
their  persons  and  estates.”  The  innovation  of  bishops  sending 
out  their  citations  in  their  own  names,  and  not  in  the  King’s, 


Archbishop  Laud. 


2 1 7 

is  pitched  upon  in  this  view.  A  jealousy  for  Crown,  as  a 
theoretical  State  power,  and  a  hatred  of  the  practical  line  it 
had  taken,  put  them  into  the  hypocritical  position  of  actually 
elevating  Charles’s  royal  prerogative  above  what  he  wanted  it 
to  be  himself.  You  shall  have  power  against  the  Church,  they 
say  :  we  shall  not  let  you  give  it  up.  It  is  not  your  own,  but 
the  national  power  delegated  to  you  for  that  very  object.  Use 
it  as  the  nation  wants  you,  throw  yourself  into  the  national 
secular  animus,  and  you  may  be  as  great  as  you  please.  We 
do  not  object  to  your  royalty  as  such ;  but  if  it  is  made  an 
engine  for  bringing  the  Church  down  upon  us,  we  turn  re¬ 
publicans. 

The  examination  then  went  into  the  very  smallest  matters 
of  mere  business  that  Laud  had  transacted  in  his  public  offices. 
A  man  in  office  is  certain  to  do  a  number  of  things  every  day 
that  displease  some  person  or  other  :  to  please  one  is  to  dis¬ 
please  another  :  and  if  at  any  given  time  the  doors  were  thrown 
open  for  all  the  grumblers,  and  the  call  given  for  all  who  had 
memories  to  rub  them  up,  and  recollect  what  grievances  they 
had  ever  suffered  from  or  thought  they  owed  to  him,  the  chance 
is  there  would  be  a  largish  muster.  Goldsmiths  come  and  com¬ 
plain  of  having  been  removed  from  their  scattered  residences 
to  Lombard  Street  and  Cheapside.  Soap-boilers  think  they 
were  hardly  used  on  one  or  two  occasions  in  the  case  of  King’s 
proclamations.  The  “  Tonnage  and  Poundage  ”  business  comes 
up.  Ship-money,  “  coat  and  conduct  money,”  come  up  again  ; 
the  monarchy  was  in  a  strait  in  these  days  to  get  money.  You 
pulled  my  house  dowrn,  says  one  man  ;  you  refused  me  compen¬ 
sation,  says  another  ;  you  made  me  pay  taxes,  and  you  made 
me  pay  tithes,  are  urged  from  two  other  quarters ;  you  called 
me  Sirrah  once,  says  a  gentleman.  Laud  explains.  The  house 
belonged  to  St.  Paul’s  Chapter,  and  was  pulled  down  in  the 
improvements  there.  The  compensation  was  an  absurd  claim. 
The  tithes  were  the  lawful  property  of  the  Church,  the  taxes 
of  the  King.  With  respect  to  the  “  Sirrah,”  he  really  cannot 
remember  either  that  he  did  or  did  not  call  Mr.  "V  assal 
“  Sirrah ;  ”  he  only  knows  that  his  constant  habit  is  to  call 
gentlemen  of  Mr.  Vassal’s  dignity  “  Sir.” 


Archbishop  Laud. 


218 

It  is  marvellous  into  what  pettiness  of  detail  the  trial  goes. 
Everything  is  fished  up  from  the  bottom,  and  collected  from 
every  corner ;  and  everything  is  treason ;  and  Laud  was  put 
into  the  humiliating  position  of  having  to  stand  up,  and  foren- 
sically  guard  every  little  thing  he  had  ever  done — to  say,  This  is 
not  judicial  evidence;  as  a  legal  court  you  cannot  listen  to  such 
stories  as  these;  only  bring  them  to  the  test  of  legal  evidence, 
and  they  disappear.  He  did  this  with  wonderful  acuteness. 
One  after  another  the  touchstone  revealed  the  frivolity  of 
the  charge,  and  the  leeml  air  was  cleared.  “  And  what  if 
they  are  true  ?  ”  went  side  by  side  with  this  process.  “  What 
do  they  come  to  ?  What  am  I  charged  with  ?  Be  it  so,  that 
I  was  very  angry  with  one  Samuel  Sherman,  of  Dedham, 
in  Essex ;  that  I  should  say  Dedham  wTas  a  maritime  town ; 
and  that  when  the  sum  demanded  of  him  was  named,  I  should 
say,  ‘a  proper  sum.’  Here  is  no  proof  but  Sherman,  and  he 
in  his  own  cause,  and  his  censure  was  laid  upon  him  by  the 
Council  table,  and  not  by  me.  But  let  it  be  ever  so  true,  here 
is  no  treason,  but  against  Dedham  or  Sherman,  that  1  can  dis¬ 
cover.” 

The  examination  went  deeper  still.  Every  corner  of  Lam¬ 
beth  was  searched  for  papers — his  library  seized  and  examined, 
and  Prynne,  with  a  Parliamentary  warrant  in  his  hand,  prowled 
about  the  archiepiscopal  rooms.  Laud  was  alone  all  the  while, 
and  in  the  position  of  a  man  undergoing  a  painful  operation ; 
a  diary  is  part  of  a  man’s  self  :  his  was  in  Prynne’s  hands, 
undergoing  keen  inspections,  with  marginal  comments  and 
interpretations,  and  interpolations  in  the  text  added  at  will, 
with  the  view  of  a  good  forensic  exhibition.  He  did  not  know 
what  unpleasant  disclosure  of  his  most  private  thoughts  might 
be  every  moment  made.  It  was  j  ust  the  very  species  of  pain — 
that  feeling  of  “  shame,”  which  he  was  so  singularly  alive  to. 
Prynne  pursued  him  to  the  Tower,  to  his  prison,  to  his  bedroom. 
Prynne,  with  a  lighted  candle  in  his  hand,  appeared  in  the 
dead  of  the  night  in  his  bedroom,  when  he  was  in  bed ;  and 
Laud  awoke  and  saw  him  picking  his  pockets  of  papers.  He 
carried  off  his  book  of  devotions  away  with  him  :  Laud  in  vain 
telling  him  that  there  was  nothing  for  Parliament  to  see  there, 


Archbishop  Laud. 


219 

but  only  the  addresses  of  his  soul  to  God.  He  was  laid  bare, 
and  all.  brought  into  the  full  vulgar  light  of  a  civil  court.  “  My 
being  in  this  place,”  is  his  final  address  to  the  Court,  “  recalls  to 
my  memory  that  which  I  long  since  read  in  Seneca  :  to  have 
to  defend  one’s-self  in  a  court,  even  if  one  is  acquitted,  is  a 
torment ;  it  is  not  a  grief  only,  it  is  no  less  than  a  torment : — 
My  Lords,  it  is  no  less  than  a  torment  for  me  to  appear  in 
this  place.” 

“  Wit  and  eloquence,” — we  are  quoting  Prynne’s  admission, 
— “  the  good  orator,  the  subtle  disputant,” — a  “  full,  gallant, 
and  pithy  defence,  which  spake  as  much  as  it  was  possible  for 
the  wit  of  man  to  invent,”  showed  Laud’s  resources  under  this 
mental  pain.  Bit  by  bit  the  whole  mass  of  evidence  against 
him  crumbled  away,  and  left  the  Court  powerless  in  point  of 
law.  Strafford’s  precedent  had  been  nullified  by  a  special  in¬ 
sulating  act,  confining  it  to  the  sole  and  single  case  of  Strafford 
himself.  A  second  single  precedent,  and  one  positively  for  the 
last  time,  had  now  to  be  instituted  ;  and  a  new  special  bill  of 
attainder  was  passed  for  Laud. 

“  On  the  6th  of  January,1  six  peers,  and  it  was  strange  to 
find  so  many  in  the  English  peerage, — to  wit,  Philip  Earl  of 
Pembroke,  Henry  Earl  of  Kent,  William  Earl  of  Salisbury, 
Oliver  Earl  of  Bolingbroke,  Dudley  Lord  North,  and  William 
Lord  Gray  of  Wark,  all  of  them  Presbyterians,  condemned  the 
Archbishop  to  be  hung  on  the  10th  of  January  next.  On  the 
same  day  with  this  unrighteous  sentence,  Parliament  abolished 
the  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 

“The  manner  of  his  death  troubled  the  good  Archbishop 
not  a  little  ;  and  with  a  deeply  Christian  magnanimity  and 
largeness  of  heart,  whatever  some  poor,  unworthy  minds  have 
thought  or  said  about  it,  he  was  not  above  petitioning  his 
enemies,  that,  considering  he  was  a  bishop  in  the  Church,  he 
might  die  by  beheading  rather  than  by  the  gibbet.  Which 
request  the  Commons  at  first  violently  refused,  but  did  after¬ 
wards  assent  unto. 

“  The  passing  of  the  ordinance  being  signified  to  him  by  the 
then  Lieutenant  of  the  Tower,  he  heard  it  with  so  even  and 

1  We  quote  the  account  at  the  end  of  the  Autobiography. 


220 


Archbishop  Laud. 


so  smootli  a  temper  as  showed  he  neither  was  ashamed  to  live 
nor  afraid  to  die.  The  time  between  the  sentence  and  execu¬ 
tion  he  spent  in  prayers  and  applications  to  the  Lord  his  God  ; 
having  obtained,  though  not  without  some  difficulty,  his  chap¬ 
lain,  Dr.  Sterne,  who  afterwards  sat  in  the  chair  of  York,  to 
attend  upon  him.  His  chaplains,  Drs.  Heywood  and  Martin, 
he  much  wished  might  be  with  him.  But  it  seems  it  was  too 
much  for  him  to  ask.  So  instead,  two  violent  Presbyterians, 
Marshall  and  Palmer,  were  ordered  by  Parliament  to  give  him 
religious  consolations,  which  consolations  his  Grace  quietly 
declined.  Indeed,  little  preparation  was  needed  to  receive 
that  blow,  which  could  not  but  be  welcome,  because  long 
expected.  For  so  well  was  he  studied  in  the  art  of  dying, 
especially  in  the  last  and  strictest  part  of  his  imprisonment, 
that  by  continual  fastings,  watchings,  prayers,  and  such  like 
acts  of  Christian  humiliation,  his  flesh  was  rarefied  into  spirit, 
and  the  whole  man  fitted  for  eternal  glories. 

“  On  the  evening  of  the  9  th,  Sheriff  Chambers  of  London 
brought  the  warrant  for  his  execution.  In  preparation  to  so 
sad  a  work,  he  betook  himself  to  his  own,  and  desired  also  the 
prayers  of  others,  and  particularly  of  Dr.  Holdsworth,  fellow- 
prisoner  in  that  place  for  a  year  and  a  half ;  though  all  that 
time  there  had  not  been  the  least  converse  betwixt  them.  This 
evening  before  his  passover,  the  night  before  the  dismal  combat 
betwixt  him  and  death,  after  he  had  refreshed  his  spirits  with 
a  moderate  supper,  he  betook  himself  unto  his  rest,  and  slept 
very  soundly  till  the  time  came  in  which  his  servants  were 
appointed  to  attend  his  rising.  A  most  assured  sign  of  a  soul 
prepared. 

“The  10th  of  January  came,  on  which  the  Archbishop  com¬ 
pleted  his  life  of  seventy- one  years  thirteen  weeks  and  four 
days.  His  death  was  the  more  remarkable  in  falling  on  St. 
William’s  Day,  as  if  it  did  design  him  to  an  equal  place  in  the 
English  calendar  with  that  which  William,  Archbishop  of 
Bourges,  had  obtained  in  the  French ;  who  (being  as  great  a 
zealot  in  his  time  against  the  spreading  and  increase  of  the 
Albigenses  as  Laud  was  thought  to  be  against  those  of  the 
Puritan  faction  and  the  Scottish  Covenanters)  hath  ever 


A  rchbishop  L  aud.  2  2 1 

since  been  honoured  as  a  saint  and  confessor  in  tlie  Gallican 
Church. 

“  In  the  morning  he  was  early  at  his  prayers,  at  which  he 
continued  till  Pennington,  Lieutenant  of  the  Tower,  and  other 
public  officers,  came  to  conduct  him  to  the  scaffold,  which  he 
ascended  with  so  brave  a  courage,  such  a  cheerful  countenance, 
as  if  he  had  mounted  rather  to  behold  a  triumph  than  be  made 
a  sacrifice  ;  and  came  not  there  to  die  but  be  translated.  And 
though  some  rude  and  uncivil  people  reviled  him,  as  he  passed 
along,  with  opprobrious  language,  as  loath  to  let  him  go  to  the 
grave  in  peace,  yet  it  never  discomposed  his  thoughts  nor 
disturbed  his  patience.  Por  he  had  profited  so  well  in  the 
school  of  Christ,  that  ‘when  he  was  reviled,  he  reviled  not 
again ;  when  he  suffered,  he  threatened  not,  but  committed  his 
cause  to  Him  that  judgeth  righteously/ 

“  And  as  he  did  not  fear  the  frowns  so  neither  did  he  covet 
the  applause  of  the  people ;  and  therefore  rather  chose  to  read 
what  he  had  to  speak  than  to  affect  the  ostentation  either  of 
memory  or  wit  in  that  dreadful  agony ;  whether  with  greater 
magnanimity  than  prudence  can  hardly  be  said.  And  here  it 
followeth  from  the  copy,  presented  very  solemnly  by  Dr. 
Sterne  to  his  sorrowing  master,  the  good  King  Charles,  at 
Oxford. 

“  The  Archbishop  s  Speech  upon  the  Scaffold. 

“  Good  People, — This  is  an  uncomfortable  time  to  preach  ; 
yet  1  shall  begin  with  a  text  of  Scripture,  Hebrews  xii.  2  : 
‘  Let  us  run  with  patience  the  race  which  is  set  before  us  : 
looking  unto  Jesus,  the  Author  and  Finisher  of  our  faith,  Who, 
for  the  joy  that  was  set  before  Him,  endured  the  Cross, 
despising  the  shame,  and  is  set  down  at  the  right  hand  of  the 
throne  of  God/ 

“  I  have  been  long  in  my  race ;  and  how  I  have  looked  to 
Jesus,  the  Author  and  Finisher  of  my  faith,  He  best  knows. 
I  am  now  come  to  the  end  of  my  race ;  and  here  I  find  the 
Cross,  a  death  of  shame.  But  the  shame  must  be  despised, 
or  no  coming  to  the  right  hand  of  God.  Jesus  despised  the 
shame  for  me,  and  God  forbid  but  that  I  should  despise  the 
shame  for  Him. 


2  2  2 


Archbishop  Laud. 


“ 1  am  going  apace,  as  you  see,  towards  the  Bed  Sea,  and 
my  feet  are  now  upon  the  very  brink  of  it ;  an  argument,  I  hope, 
that  God  is  bringing  me  into  the  Land  of  Promise;  for  that 
was  the  way  through  which  He  led  His  people. 

“  But  before  they  came  to  it,  He  instituted  a  passover  for 
them.  A  lamb  it  was,  but  it  must  be  eaten  with  sour  herbs. 
I  shall  obey,  and  labour  to  digest  the  sour  herbs  as  well  as  the 
lamb.  And  I  shall  remember  it  is  the  Lord's  passover.  I 
shall  not  think  of  the  herbs,  nor  be  angry  with  the  hand  that 
gathereth  them ;  but  look  up  only  to  Him  who  instituted  that, 
and  governs  these  :  for  men  can  have  no  more  power  over  me 
than  what  is  given  them  from  above. 

“  I  am  not  in  love  with  this  passage  through  the  Bed  Sea,  for 
I  have  the  weakness  and  infirmities  of  flesh  and  blood  plenti¬ 
fully  in  me.  And  I  have  prayed  with  my  Saviour,  TJt  transiret 
calix  iste,  that  this  cup  of  red  wine  might  pass  from  me.  But 
if  not,  God's  will,  not  mine,  be  done.  And  I  shall  most 
willingly  drink  of  this  cup,  as  deep  as  He  pleases,  and  enter 
into  this  sea,  yea,  and  pass  through  it,  in  the  way  that  He  shall 
lead  me.  .  .  . 

“  And  as  for  this  people,  they  are  at  this  day  miserably  mis¬ 
led  :  God  of  His  mercy  open  their  eyes  that  they  may  see  the 
right  way.  Bor  at  this  day  the  blind  lead  the  blind ;  and  if 
they  go  on,  both  will  certainly  fall  into  the  ditch.  .  .  . 

“  And  though  I  am  not  only  the  first  Archbishop,  but  the 
first  man  that  ever  died  by  an  Ordinance  in  Parliament,  yet 
some  of  my  predecessors  have  gone  this  way,  though  not  by 
this  means  :  for  Elphegus  was  hurried  away  and  lost  his  head 
by  the  Danes;  Simon  Sudbury  in  the  fury  of  Wat  Tyler  and 
his  fellows.  Before  these,  St.  John  Baptist  had  his  head 
danced  off  by  a  lewd  woman ;  and  St.  Cyprian,  Archbishop  of 
Carthage,  submitted  his  head  to  a  persecuting  sword.  Many 
examples,  great  and  good;  and  they  teach  me  patience.  Bor  I 
hope  my  cause  in  heaven  will  look  of  another  dye  than  the 
colour  that  is  put  upon  it  here. 

“And  some  comfort  it  is  to  me,  not  only  that  I  go  the  way 
of  these  great  men  in  their  several  generations ;  but  also  that 
my  charge,  as  foul  as  it  is  made,  looks  like  that  of  the  J ews 


Archbishop  Laud. 


2  2  2 

against  St.  Paul ;  for  he  was  accused  for  the  law  and  the  temple, 
i.e.  religion ;  and  like  that  of  St.  Stephen,  for  breaking  the  ordi¬ 
nances  which  Moses  gave,  i.e.  law  and  religion,  the  holy  place 
and  the  temple. 

“  But  you  will  say,  Do  I  then  compare  myself  with  the  in¬ 
tegrity  of  St.  Paul  and  St.  Stephen  ?  No ;  far  be  that  from  me. 
I  only  raise  a  comfort  to  myself,  that  these  great  saints  and 
servants  of  God  were  laid  at  in  their  times,  as  I  am  now.” 

And  after  disclaiming  ever  having  had  an  intention  of  in¬ 
troducing  arbitrary  power  into  the  constitution,  or  the  Papacy 
into  the  Church,  and  declaring  that  he  had  belonged,  in  heart 
and  soul,  always  to  the  Church  of  England,  and  never  looked 
beyond  her,  and  simply  aimed  at  her  improvement  and  resto¬ 
ration,  “  I  do  therefore,”  he  ends,  “  here,  in  the  presence  of  God 
and  His  holy  angels,  take  it  upon  my  death,  that  I  never  en¬ 
deavoured  the  subversion  either  of  law  or  religion.  And  I  desire 
you  all  to  remember  this  protest  of  mine  for  my  innocency  in 
this,  and  from  all  treasons  whatsoever. 

“  But  I  have  done.  I  forgive  all  the  world,  all  and  every  of 
those  bitter  enemies  which  have  persecuted  me ;  and  humbly 
desire  to  be  forgiven  of  God  first,  and  then  of  every  man.  And 
so  I  heartily  desire  you  to  join  in  prayer  with  me. 

“  0  eternal  God  and  merciful  Eather,  look  down  upon  me 
in  mercy,  in  the  riches  and  fulness  of  all  Thy  mercies.  Look 
upon  me,  but  not  till  Thou  hast  nailed  my  sins  to  the  Cross  of 
Christ,  not  till  Thou  hast  bathed  me  in  the  blood  of  Christ, 
not  till  I  have  hid  myself  in  the  wounds  of  Christ ;  that  so  the 
punishment  due  unto  my  sins  may  pass  over  me.  And  since 
Thou  art  pleased  to  try  me  to  the  uttermost,  1  most  humbly 
beseech  Thee,  give  me  now  in  this  great  instant,  full  patience, 
proportionable  comfort,  and  a  heart  ready  to  die  for  Thine 
honour,  the  King’s  happiness,  and  this  Church’s  preservation. 
And  my  zeal  to  these  (far  from  arrogancy  be  it  spoken)  is  all 
the  sin  (human  frailty  excepted,  and  all  the  incidents  thereto) 
which  is  yet  known  to  me  in  this  particular,  for  which  I  come 
now  to  suffer ;  I  say,  in  this  particular  of  treason.  But  other¬ 
wise,  my  sins  are  many  and  great ;  Lord,  pardon  them  all,  and 
those  especially  (whatever  they  are)  which  have  drawn  down 


224 


Archbishop  Laud. 


this  present  judgment  upon  me.  And  when  Thou  hast  given 
me  strength  to  hear  it,  do  with  me  as  seems  best  in  Thine  own 
eyes.  Amen.” 

After  saying  the  Lord’s  Prayer,  he  “  rose,  and  gave  his  papers 
to  Dr.  Sterne,  his  chaplain,  who  went  with  him  to  his  martyrdom, 
saying,  c  Doctor,  I  give  you  this,  that  you  may  show  it  to  your 
fellow- chaplains,  that  they  may  see  how  I  went  out  of  the  world ; 
and  God’s  blessing  and  mercy  be  upon  you  and  them.’  Then 
turning  to  a  person  named  Hinde,  whom  he  perceived  busy 
writing  the  words  of  his  address,  he  said,  ‘Friend,  I  beseech  you 
hear  me.  I  cannot  say  I  have  spoken  every  word  as  it  is  in  my 
paper,  but  I  have  gone  very  near  it,  to  help  my  memory  as 
well  as  I  could,  but  I  beseech  you,  let  me  have  no  wrong  done 
me;’  intimating  that  he  ought  not  to  publish  an  imperfect 
copy.  ‘  Sir/  replied  Hinde,  ‘  you  shall  not.  If  I  do  so,  let  it 
fall  upon  my  own  head.  I  pray  God  have  mercy  upon  your 
soul.’  ‘  I  thank  you,’  he  answered ;  ‘  I  did  not  speak  with  any 
jealousy  as  if  you  would  do  so,  but  only,  as  a  poor  man  going 
out  of  the  world,  it  is  not  possible  for  me  to  keep  to  the  words 
of  my  paper,  and  a  phrase  might  do  me  wrong.’ 

An  intense,  indescribable  weariness  of  life  appears  in  all 
Laud’s  last  days,  and  deepens  as  the  end  approaches.  He  is 
absorbed  in  it.  A  long- sustained  period  of  hopeless  mental 
exertion  left  him  fixed  and  riveted  on  the  one  idea  of  an  end,  as 
if  he  were  under  some  dominant  constraining  emotion. 

“  He  now  applied  himself  to  the  fatal  block,  as  to  the  haven 
of  his  rest.  But  finding  the  way  full  of  people  who  had  placed 
themselves  upon  the  theatre  to  behold  the  tragedy,  he  said, 
‘  I  thought  there  would  have  been  an  empty  scaffold,  that  I 
might  have  had  room  to  die.  I  beseech  you,  let  me  have  an 
end  of  this  misery,  for  I  have  endured  it  long.’  Hereupon 
room  was  made  for  him  to  die.  While  he  was  preparing  him¬ 
self  for  the  axe,  he  said,  ‘  I  will  put  off  my  doublet,  and  God’s 
will  be  done.  I  am  willing  to  go  out  of  the  world ;  no  man 
can  be  more  willing  to  send  me  out  than  I  am  willing  to  be 
gone.’ 

“But  there  were  broad  chinks  between  the  boards  of  the 
scaffold ;  and  he  saw  that  some  people  were  got  under  the  very 


Archbishop  Laud. 


225 


place  where  the  block  was  seated.  So  he  desired  either  that 
the  people  might  be  removed,  or  dust  brought  to  fill  up  the 
crevices,  lest,  said  he,  ‘  my  innocent  blood  should  fall  upon  the 
heads  of  the  people.’ 

“  The  holy  Martyr  was  now  ready  for  death,  and  very 
calmly  waiting  for  his  crown.  It  was  like  a  scene  out  of 
primitive  times.  His  face  wTas  fresh  and  ruddy,  and  of  a 
cheerful  countenance.  But  there  stood,  to  look  on  and  rail, 
one  Sir  John  Clotworthy,  an  Irishman,  and  follower  of  the 
Earl  of  Warwick.  He  was  a  violent  and  wrong-headed  man, 
an  enthusiast,  and  very  furious  as  a  demagogue.  Being  irri¬ 
tated  that  the  revilings  of  the  people  moved  not  the  strong 
quiet  of  the  holy  Martyr,  or  sharpened  him  into  any  show  of 
passion,  ‘  he  would  needs  put  in  and  try  what  he  could  do 
with  his  sponge  and  vinegar.’  So  he  propounded  questions  to 
him,  not  as  if  to  learn,  but  rudely  and  out  of  ill-nature,  and  to 
expose  him  to  his  associates.  ‘  What,’  asked  he,  ‘  is  the  com- 
fortablest  saying  which  a  dying  man  would  have  in  his  mouth  V 
To  which  the  holy  Martyr  with  very  much  meekness  answered, 

‘  Cupio  dissolvi  et  esse  cum  Christo .’  ‘  That  is  a  good  desire,’ 

said  the  other,  *  but  there  must  be  a  foundation  for  that  divine 
assurance.’  ‘  No  man  can  express  it,’  replied  the  Martyr ; 

‘  it  is  to  be  found  within.’  The  busy  man  still  pursued  him, 
and  said,  “  It  is  founded  upon  a  word,  nevertheless,  and  that 
word  should  be  known.’  ‘  That  word,’  said  the  Martyr,  ‘  is 
the  knowledge  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  that  alone.’  But  he  saw 
that  this  was  but  an  indecent  interruption,  and  that  there 
would  be  no  end  to  the  trouble,  and  so  he  turned  away  from 
him  to  the  executioner,  as  the  gentler  and  discreeter  person  ; 
and,  putting  some  money  into  his  hand,  without  the  least  dis¬ 
temper  or  change  of  countenance,  he  said,  ‘  Here,  honest 
friend,  God  forgive  thee,  and  do  thine  office  upon  me  in  mercy.’ 
Then  did  he  go  upon  his  knees,  and  the  executioner  said  that 
he  should  give  a  sign  for  the  blow  to  come  ;  to  which  he 
answered,  ‘  I  will,  but  first  let  me  fit  myself.’  ” 

He  then  knelt  down  for  his  last  open  prayer — short,  but  so 
expressive  of  his  state  of  mind.  A  world  of  enemies  had  been 
long  wishing  him  away ;  self-defence  had  been  hitherto  a  duty, 

M.E.-I.]  p 


226 


Archbishop  Laud. 


but  now  that  they  had  fairly  their  own  way,  and  got  their 
ends,  he  was  satisfied,  ready  to  relieve  them  of  his  presence. 
He  did  not  want  to  stay.  Life  is  weariness  ;  death  is  rest. 

“  ‘  Lord,  I  am  coming  as  fast  as  I  can.  I  know  I  must  pass 
through  the  shadow  of  death  before  I  can  come  to  see  Thee. 
But  it  is  but  umbra  mortis ,  a  mere  shadow  of  death,  a  little 
darkness  upon  nature  ;  but  Thou  by  Thy  merits  and  passion 
hast  broken  through  the  jaws  of  death.  So,  Lord,  receive  my 
soul,  and  have  mercy  upon  me  ;  and  bless  this  kingdom  with 
peace  and  plenty,  and  with  brotherly  love  and  charity,  that 
there  may  not  be  this  effusion  of  Christian  blood  amongst 
them  for  Jesus  Christ  His  sake,  if  it  be  Thy  will.’ 

“  Then  he  bowed  his  head  upon  the  block,  ‘  down,  as  upon 
a  bed,’  and  prayed  silently  awhile.  Ho  man  heard  what  it  was 
he  prayed  in  that  last  prayer.  After  that  he  said  out  loud, 
‘  Lord,  receive  my  soul which  was  the  sign  to  the  executioner, 
and  at  one  blow  he  was  beheaded.” 

Laud’s  is  an  instance  of  a  great  career  founded  upon  a 
dream  ;  a  great,  practical,  powerful,  political  mind,  that  pursued 
a  visionary  object.  The  high  feudal  idea  of  Church  greatness 
which  led  him  through  his  course  was  an  impracticable,  unreal 
one,  in  the  great  revolution  of  society  which  had  taken  place. 
When  the  Church  has  once  lost  her  hold  upon  the  mass,  and 
fallen  from  her  power,  she  must  be  restored  from  below  and 
not  from  above.  She  has  to  begin  from  the  bottom  again,  and 
must  be  raised  by  the  slow  advance  and  gradual  inoculation  of 
the  mass.  She  must  rise  again  by  a  popular  movement,  and 
by  influences  and  efforts  upon  the  open  area  and  level.  Laud’s 
movement  was  not  a  popular  one,  and  we  know  not  whether  it 
could  have  been  made  so.  The  age  was  set  one  way,  and  he 
took  perhaps  the  only  engine  there  was  for  him.  But  to 
erect  a  high  medieval  prelacy  and  priestly  power  upon  such  a 
puritanised  basis  as  the  Church  then  presented,  was,  in  strict 
or  do  naturae ,  beginning  at  the  wrong  end.  We  are  criticising 
the  movement,  and  not  the  man.  The  man  is  dependent  on 
his  age,  and  must  take  what  weapon  comes  to  hand.  It  was 
better  doing  something  than  nothing ;  using  an  awkward  and 
inaccurate  instrument  than  none  at  all.  Great  men  upon  their 


Archbishop  Laud. 


227 


historical  stage — it  is  not,  we  hope,  a  morbid  sentiment  to 
utter — are  objects  of  compassion.  The  worldly  machinery 
and  the  state  of  things  they  are  in  force  them  upon  incon¬ 
gruities,  and  allow  them  only  some  one  crooked  weapon,  some 
one  angular  posture,  some  one  effective  elbow  thrust.  Their 
own  minds  even  become  appropriated  and  naturalised  by  the 
sphere  they  work  in,  and  see  that  one  mode  of  acting  only  and 
no  other.  It  remains  for  some  clearer  day  to  determine  what 
minds  really  are  in  themselves,  and  what  is  the  genuine  in¬ 
trinsic  man  apart  from  hodiernal  influences  and  moulding. 
Such  a  question  would  only  take  us  wandering  now  into  the 
shadowy  region  of  moral  metaphysics. 

Let  us  not  be  misunderstood,  however.  Laud’s  career  was 
not  unpractical  because  its  aim  was  visionary  ;  not  ineffective 
because  it  did  not  hit  its  own  favourite  mark.  It  had  most 
important  practical  effects  upon  the  English  Church.  The 
medieval  philosophy  made  real  physical  discoveries  in  its 
dreams,  and  the  searcher  after  the  philosopher’s  stone  was  a 
real  scientific  man  and  chemist  through  that  ideal  medium. 
Laud’s  immediate  acts  and  aims  were  most  practical,  and  a 
great  practical  rise  in  the  English  Church  was  the  effect  of  his 
career.  He  stopped  her  just  in  time,  as  she  was  rapidly  going 
down  hill,  and  he  saved  all  the  Catholicism  which  the  reign  of 
Genevan  influence  had  left  her.  There  is  no  mistaking  the 
tendencies  of  that  period.  That  we  have  our  Prayer-Book, 
our  altar,  even  our  Episcopacy  itself,  we  may,  humanly  speak¬ 
ing,  thank  Laud.  The  holy  table  in  all  our  churches,  altar- 
wise  at  the  east  end,  is  a  visible  memorial  of  Laud  which  none 
can  escape.  It  was  not  so  before  his  time  :  it  is  not  necessarily 
so  by  the  actual  rubric  of  our  Church  at  this  moment.  That 
our  Articles  have  not  a  Genevan  sense  tied  to  them,  and  are 
not  an  intolerable  burden  to  the  Church,  is  owing  to  Laud. 
He  rescued  them  from  the  fast  tightening  Calvinistic  grasp, 
and  left  them,  by  his  prefixed  “  Declaration,”  open.  Laud 
saved  the  English  Church.  That  any  one  of  Catholic  pre¬ 
dilections  can  belong  to  the  English  Church  is  owing,  so  far  as 
we  can  see,  to  Laud.  He  saw  the  good  element  that  was  in 
her,  elicited,  fostered,  and  nurtured  it ;  brought  the  incipient 


228 


Archbishop  Laucl. 


Church  school  to  size  and  shape,  and  left  it  spreading  over  the 
Church,  and  setting  the  standard.  Let  us  he  historically  just. 
Let  the  dead  have  their  due.  Let  us  acknowledge  facts,  and 
allow  their  true  stamp  and  authorship  to  remain  upon  them. 
The  English  Church  in  her  Catholic  aspect  is  a  memorial  of 
Laud. 

There  is  a  reproach,  however,  in  the  shape  of  praise  from 
which  we  are  anxious  to  rescue  him — the  praise  of  a  class  who 
know  next  to  nothing  about  him,  and  simply  regard  him  as 
the  patron  of  Church  opulence  and  comfort,  of  easy  posts  of 
dignity  and  the  Establishment  system.  It  is  too  obvious  a 
thing  to  say  that  this  class  would  very  soon  have  found  him  a 
disagreeable  master.  A  small  experience  of  the  actual  man 
would  have  modified  their  commendation.  The  dead  cannot 
help  themselves  here,  and  persons  who  have  not  one  single 
sympathy  with  Laud’s  self-devotion,  deep  priestly  feeling, 
love  of  Church  doctrine  or  discipline,  and  who,  if  they  had 
lived  in  that  day,  would  not  have  stirred  a  finger  to  save  the 
Church  from  sinking  into  a  Presbyterian  establishment,  can 
now  safely  eulogise  him,  and  smoothly  thank  him  for  the 
official  powers  which  they  enjoy  from  him,  and  which  they 
employ  against  that  very  Catholic  spirit  in  the  Church  which 
they  were  originally  instituted  to  defend.  However,  we 
observe  this  sort  of  praise  dying  away,  as  parties  get  to  under¬ 
stand  themselves  and  each  other  better ;  and  should  anything 
which  we  have  said  tend  at  all  to  hasten  its  departure,  we  shall 
feel  it  no  subject  of  regret. 


III. 


CARLYLE’S  OLIVER  CROMWELL* 


(April  1846.) 


Mr.  Carlyle  at  last  presents  to  us,  invested  with  the 
dignity  of  circumstance  and  detail,  his  great  man.  Up  to  this 
time  he  has  given  us  touches  rather  than  portraits,  and  has 
spread  himself  over  a  heterogeneous  field  of  heroism  rather 
than  exhibited  a  hero.  How  we  have  the  hero  in  person. 
Cromwell  is  the  great  man  on  whom  Mr.  Carlyle  has  alighted, 
and  whom  he  holds  up  as  the  exemplar  of  true  greatness  to  the 
English  mind.  His  unsteady  gyrations  have  at  last  found  a 
centre ;  his  magnificent  whirl  round  the  universe  has  at  last 
assumed  locality,  and  Cromwell  is  the  point  of  attraction.  A 
philosophy,  by  condensing  itself  in  one  instance,  sometimes 
gains  in  effectiveness.  A  rationale  of  heroism  was  not  likely 
to  tell  much  on  English  minds,  which  appealed  to  Mahomet, 
Odin,  Dante,  Knox,  Luther,  Rousseau,  Dr.  Johnson,  and  Vol¬ 
taire,  as  one  grand  united  specimen  of  it,  and  which  seemed  to 
demand  a  complete  mental  suicide  and  decomposition  in  the 
recipient  previous  to  its  reception.  Cromwell  has,  at  any  rate, 
the  advantage  of  being  one  man,  and  of  being  an  Englishman. 
He  shows  some  English  features ;  he  appeals  to  some  party 
associations.  His  cause  has  its  admirers,  and  warm  ones.  Mr. 
Carlyle  so  far  enjoys  a  nearer  vicinity  to  common  sense.  His 
philosophy,  not  less  dreamy  and  unquiet  in  itself,  occupies 
more  solid  and  more  national  ground ;  its  new  and  embodied 
shape  claims  for  it  some  fresh  attention,  and  his  example  re¬ 
minds  us  of  his  theory  of  heroism. 

*  Oliver  Cromwell' s  Letters  and  Speeches :  with  Elucidations.  By  THOMAS 
Carlyle.  London,  1846. 


230 


C a  rtyle  s  Crow,  wel l. 

Before  we  proceed,  then,  to  the  contents  of  these  volumes, 
we  have  something  to  say  about  the  writer  as  a  philosopher 
and  teacher.  Mr.  Carlyle  is  the  patron  of  revolutionary  heroes. 
He  admires  heroes ;  he  prefers  the  revolutionary  field  for  their 
display.  He  lives  in  this  mixed  atmosphere  of  thought ;  he 
selects  this  mixed  standard  of  character.  He  appears  before 
us  in  two  aspects,  which  we  shall  successively  notice — as  a 
preacher  of  hero-worship,  and  of  national  regeneration  and 
reform. 

Mr.  Carlyle’s  idea  of  the  hero  is  a  simple  one.  He  lays 
down  as  essential  one  great  characteristic,  and  one  only.  That 
characteristic  is  power.  The  hero  is  a  person  who  energises  on 
some  large  scale  ;  penetrates,  makes  his  way,  impresses,  moves, 
and  leads.  He  exhibits  muscle  and  nerve,  is  great  in  inward 
resources  and  activities,  and  is  able  to  defend  and  assail,  to 
repel  and  conquer,  to  save  and  to  destroy.  He  does  this  either 
by  the  intellect  or  by  the  sword,  and  is  either  statesman, 
warrior,  or  author,  as  may  be.  As  the  Stoic’s  hero  was  the 
wise  man,  the  “ sapiens  et  rex”  Mr.  Carlyle’s  is  the  strong  man, 
the  “  king,  conning,  or  able  man.”  His  might  makes  his  right. 
His  own  power  and  impetus  are  his  Bible  and  creed.  He  pro¬ 
duces  effects,  and  he  sees  them ;  he  believes  in  his  own  right 
arm,  and  he  need  believe  in  little  else.  Such  is  Mr.  Carlyle’s 
hero  of  force.  Whether  or  not  upon  other  recognised  princi¬ 
ples  and  other  established  standards  his  favourite  may  deserve 
to  be  canonised,  or  may  deserve  to  be  hung,  he  does  not  inquire. 
He  may  be  a  St.  Bernard  or  he  may  be  a  Mirabeau.  Voltaire 
and  Eousseau,  Dante  and  Dr.  Johnson,  are  all  literary  heroes, 
because  all  produced  great  literary  results.  Mahomet,  the 
medieval  Churchmen,  Knox,  and  Luther,  are  all  religious  heroes, 
because  all  produced  great  religious  results.  The  hero,  as 
“  king,”  “  priest,”  and  “  prophet,”  shows  his  strength,  manifests 
an  energetic  impulse  which  carries  him  through ;  and  that 
strength  and  impulse  are  in  themselves  evidences  of  his 
heroism. 

The  moral  result  of  such  a  view  is  obvious.  A  great  ulti¬ 
mate  standard  is  erected  beyond  the  sphere  and  limits  of 
morality ;  an  ulterior  law  is  discovered  superseding  the  imme- 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


231 


diate  and  contiguous  distinctions  of  right  and  wrong.  You  see 
a  great  man  whom  you  want  to  praise,  but  cannot  consistently 
with  moral  considerations ;  he  is  either  bloodthirsty,  or  rapa¬ 
cious,  or  dissolute,  or  tyrannical.  As  you  cannot  then  do  it  on 
a  natural,  you  do  it  on  an  esoteric  ground ;  you  pass  by  the 
moral  basis,  and  you  take  the  heroic.  The  heroic  depresses 
and  obscures  the  moral  region,  and  secondary  succumbs  by 
natural  law  to  final  truth.  Heroism  becomes  the  common 
ground  on  which  good  and  evil  meet.  Mr.  Carlyle’s  philosophy 
creates  a  point  of  sight,  at  which  those  two  seem  to  lose  their 
distinction  and  present  one  common  nature.  An  ulterior  unity 
absorbs  the  immediate  division  between  them,  and  viewed  in 
their  source  and  essential  life,  both  seem  to  act  together,  do 
the  same  work,  and  do  it  equally  well,  equally  gloriously.  We 
lift  up  a  veil;  we  remove  a  surface.  We  look  through  the 
apparent  into  the  real,  elementary,  and  fundamental ;  and  in  a 
lower  depth  of  reality  and  truth  we  see  the  mighty  antagonisms 
of  established  morality  joined  in  one  root,  and  existing  in  an 
essential  aboriginal  identity.  There,  instead  of  good  and  evil 
dividing  the  world,  the  one  grandeval  element  of  Power  exists 
alone,  the  substance  of  which  those  are  the  two  subsequent 
aspects,  shadows,  and  representatives.  A  naked  monarchy  of 
force  includes  all  causes,  all  effects  within  it ;  and  we  see 
the  one  essence  into  which  all  action,  feeling,  thought  is  re¬ 
solvable. 

Let  not  Mr.  Carlyle  imagine  that  because  he  makes  much 
in  his  own  way  of  a  “  sense  of  difference  between  right  and 
wrong,”  and  talks  of  it  “  filling  all  time  and  space,”  and  “  body¬ 
ing  forth  heaven  and  hell,”  and  being  the  grand  feature  of  those 
“  puritan,  old  Christian  ages — the  element  which  stamps  them 
as  heroic  that  because  he  talks  of  “the  silences,  the  eternities, 
the  life  everlasting  and  the  death  everlasting,”  that  his  view 
really  embraces  what  is  understood  by  the  difference  between 
right  and  wrong.  The  sense  of  right  and  wrong  takes  its  place 
with  him  amongst  the  other  powerful  instincts  in  nature 
which  stimulate  and  rouse,  lead  to  action,  and  produce  effects. 
“  Morality,”  he  says,  “  what  we  call  the  moral  quality  of  a  man, 
is  but  another  side  of  the  one  vital  force  whereby  he  is  and 


232 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


works.”  It  is  the  source  from  which  a  great  number  of  mag¬ 
nificent  movements  upon  the  surface  of  this  globe  have  issued. 
The  moral  “  sense  ”  is  a  great  fact  in  the  world ;  it  is  a  grand, 
hidden,  impelling  principle,  existing  in  the  mind  of  the  human 
race,  and  acting  with  majestic  effectiveness,  mysterious  depth, 
and  ghostly  terror  upon  it.  But  this  “  sense  ”  has  no  reality 
in  Mr.  Carlyle’s  system,  of  which  it  is  the  counterpart ;  it  re¬ 
fers  to  no  absolute  law,  and  appeals  to  no  eternal  standard  in 
the  Divine  Mind.  The  Divine  Mind,  if  we  are  taken  thither 
at  all,  only  appears  to  reflect  in  this  philosophy  the  impulse, 
emotion,  will,  perception,  regular  or  irregular,  of  the  human ; 
we  are  sent  from  God  to  men  again,  and  the  “  sense  ”  of  right 
and  wrong,  thrown  back  upon  itself,  goes  on  for  ever  a  “  sense  ” 
without  its  object,  a  perception  of  nothing,  an  introverted  eye. 
The  sense  of  right  makes  right ;  what  every  man  thinks  right 
is  right,  because  he  thinks  it.  The  wild,  uncertain,  irregular 
impression  in  men’s  souls  rolls  on  and  tosses  like  the  ocean ; 
morality  follows  nature’s  passion  and  humour,  and  reflects  all 
the  sinuosities  and  extravagances  of  man’s  will.  Words  mean 
what  they  mean  in  the  philosophy  in  which  they  are  used.  A 
religious  man  talks  of  a  God,  so  does  the  Pantheist ;  but  the 
religious  man  means  his  God,  and  the  Pantheist  his.  In  the 
same  way,  a  Pantheist  can  talk  of  good  and  evil,  and  of  right 
and  wrong,  just  as  the  religious  man  can ;  but  then  they  are 
his  good  and  evil,  and  his  right  and  wrong.  They  are  shadows, 
subjective  things,  without  existence  out  of  the  man’s  self.  His 
right  and  wrong  only  exist  in  the  idea  of  them  in  the  human 
mind,  and  multiply  and  vary  with  the  varying  forms  of  that 
mind.  Future  reward  and  punishment  undergo  the  same  dis¬ 
solving  process.  The  day  of  judgment,  heaven  and  hell,  are 
part  of  the  moral  idea;  they  are  the  enlivening,  illustrating, 
pictorial  ingredient  in  the  idea.  They  reside  within  the  idea, 
as  a  meaning  resides  within  a  word.  The  two  worlds  of  futurity 
have  a  praesential  existence,  as  imagery  within  the  mind,  and 
simply  exhibit  the  moral  notion  itself  in  scenic  shape.  And  the 
anticipation  of  them  as  real  future  states  is  regarded  as  a  pre¬ 
sent  impression,  influencing  and  felt  in  present  time.  In  this 
way  pantheism  can  take  up  any  language  and  thought,  even 


Carlyles  Cromwell,  233 

tlie  most  religious  :  in  the  act  of  adopting  it  unsubstantiates 
them ;  it  coils  round  them  like  a  serpent,  and  makes  them  in¬ 
ternal  to  itself ;  it  imbeds  them  in  its  own  idealism,  and  pre¬ 
sents  them  to  the  world  again  as  parts  of  a  new  whole,  and 
impregnated  with  a  new  and  wholly  subjective  reality. 

We  have  stated  Mr.  Carlyle’s  heroic  note.  Now,  “hero” 
is  a  word  which  has  its  own  meaning,  like  other  words ; 
though  no  dictionary  may  have  exactly  and  summarily  defined 
it.  Its  meaning  may  be  gathered  from  the  language  of  poetry, 
legend,  and  history  ;  from  current  phraseology,  ancient  and 
modern.  And  we  have  to  say,  in  limine ,  that  Mr.  Carlyle  has 
not  taken  this  meaning,  but  invented  a  totally  different  one 
of  his  own.  Without  at  all  wishing  to  impose  a  classical  type 
of  heroism,  as  such,  upon  modern  times,  we  must  nevertheless 
assert  the  fact  that  that  type  has  taken  deep  possession  of  the 
world’s  imagination ;  has  formed  the  view  of  the  poet,  age 
after  age,  and  run  through  epic,  play,  and  romance.  Ancient 
epic  and  modern  tragedy  display  the  same  essential  hero, 
clothed  in  different  costumes.  And  from  this  original,  universal 
type,  Mr.  Carlyle  has  wholly  departed. 

According  to  the  old  authentic  poetical  type,  a  hero  is  a 
person  who,  in  some  special  and  marked  way,  shows,  under 
a  surface  of  outward  activity  and  adventure, — that  of  the 
military  life  especially, — a  soul  superior  to  and  not  belonging 
to  this  world.  The  latter  is  the  final  and  consummating 
characteristic ;  the  one  to  which  all  the  rest  tend  and  aspire. 
What  taste  is  to  the  elegant  man,  and  generosity  to  the  noble 
man,  and  courage  to  the  brave  man,  that  the  unearthly  spirit 
was  to  the  hero.  The  magnanimity,  generosity,  ardour,  and 
refinement  of  ordinary  virtue  were  transcendentalised  in  him  ; 
a  pure  unalloyed  nobility  ran  through  him,  like  a  vein  celestial, 
and  he  had  a  soul  akin  to  the  supernatural.  His  birth  typified 
it,  and  he  was  a  demigod,  and  claimed,  on  one  or  other  side, 
divine  parentage.  This  pure  and  high  nature,  however, 
revealed  itself  through  the  turmoil  and  contention  of  the  earthly 
field,  and  the  hero  had,  consequently,  appended  to  his  celestial 
refinement  and  nobility,  human  force. 

One  whole  side  of  the  picture  exhibits  him  exerting  this. 


234 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


He  appears  on  the  field  of  battle,  and  in  the  wild  forest ; 
fighting  with  men,  and  fighting  with  beasts  ;  he  penetrates  the 
awful  cavern ;  he  sails  on  his  voyage  of  discovery  over  the  wide 
sea ;  the  glitter  of  armour,  the  shout,  the  noise  of  trumpets, 
and  cloud  of  dust,  surround  him.  Yet  even  in  this  rude  and 
tumultuous  part  of  the  scene,  where  naked  power  and  gross 
earth  seem  to  dominate,  the  hero  was  not  wholly  earthly,  and 
simply  strong.  He  pursued,  on  the  field  of  battle  and  adven¬ 
ture,  something  which  lay  beyond  it.  The  objects  which  the 
visible  scene  supplied  served  to  draw  him  out,  and  gave 
him  material  to  energise  upon ;  but  he  used  them,  and  did  not 
rest  upon  them  ;  they  were  instrumental  to  him,  and  not  final ; 
they  represented  something  above  themselves,  which  he  was 
really  pursuing,  while  he  was  pursuing  them.  Higher  aims 
and  longings  floated  vaguely  and  unconsciously  before  him. 
The  glory  which  swam  before  his  eyes,  and  led  him  after  it, 
was  not  his  own  selfish  greatness,  but  a  greatness  out  of  him¬ 
self.  It  was  not  the  tangible,  material  thing  that  could  be 
taken  hold  of  and  grasped,  that  could  be  enjoyed,  and  make 
him  feel  satisfied  as  if  he  had  a  meal ;  it  mocked  him,  like  the 
air  ;  it  dazzled  and  fascinated,  but  refused  to  be  caught ;  it  was 
a  light  from  another  sun,  and  a  sample  of  the  Olympian  day, 
which  had  been  sent  down  here  to  tempt  and  elevate  him. 

On  another  side  of  the  picture,  however,  the  unearthly  spirit 
comes  out,  more  undisturbed  and  unalloyed  ;  and  in  serener, 
purer  air,  apart  from  the  noisy  strife,  and  trial  of  strength,  the 
hero  showed  clearly  what  his  true  nature  was,  and  what  he 
tended  to.  We  see  him  retiring  from  the  public  scene,  to  feed 
on  his  own  thoughts  and  muse  on  things  divine.  He  showed 
that  he  did  not  belong  to  this  world,  by  being  able  to  go 
willingly  out  of  it ;  and  that  he  was  not  wedded  to  tumult 
and  collision,  as  low,  aspiring  minds  are,  by  being  able  to  leave 
them.  He  gave  another  and  yet  more  certain  sign  of  his 
nature.  He  offered  the  best  and  truest  evidence  that  he  was 
not  made  for  this  world  in  the  fact  that  he  was  born  to  suffer 
in  it.  Sometimes  a  long,  laborious,  unrecompensed  life,  some¬ 
times  a  premature  death,  was  allotted  him.  Fate  had  set  its 
hand  upon  him.  He  knew  it,  he  felt  he  was  oXLyoypovLos,  and 


Carlyles  Cromwell.  235 

soon  to  pass  away,  and  leave  all  behind  him.  This  life  was 
his  outside,  even  while  he  had  it :  the  world  was  not  his  own, 
even  while  he  was  in  it ;  the  vivid  consciousness  of  its  transi¬ 
ency  deprived  him  of  that  property  and  basis  in  it  which  the 
majority  feel,  and  abstracted  the  joyous  sensation  of  life  and 
feeling  of  home  from  his  earthly  residence.  An  original  un- 
congeniality  with  earth,  again,  issued  by  a  natural  law,  in 
discord  and  collision  with  it  afterwards  ;  and  as  life  went  along, 
it  developed  its  first  jar.  The  hero  came  into  awkward  contact 
with  his  fellow-men,  was  suspected,  feared,  disliked,  and 
wronged.  Half-envied,  half-despised,  he  was  an  obnoxious 
person  to  the  great ;  he  was  sent  out  of  the  princely  council, 
and  told  he  was  nobody.  He  was  made  to  feel  himself  a 
stranger,  isolated  and  alone.  He  wandered  forth,  and,  leaving 
the  field  of  emulation  and  glory,  conversed  with  mute  nature. 
He  saw  earth  and  air,  rocks  and  deserts,  around  him,  or 

‘  To  the  shore  of  the  old  sea  he  betook 
Himself  alone,  and,  casting  forth  upon  the  purple  sea 
His  wet  eyes,  and  his  hands  to  heaven/ 

advanced  his  sad  plea  to  ears  divine  : — 

Mrjrep,  inel  p1  ereK.es  ye  pivvvOabiov  nep  eovra , 

Tiprjv  nep  pot  o(pe\Xev  ’ 0\vpTrios  eyyvoXl^ai, 

Zevs  v\}/t(3pepeTr]s ,  vvv  S’  ovde  pe  tvtBov  eriaev. 

He  fulfilled,  in  this  attitude  and  these  trials,  his  original  type. 
He  did  not  mix  well  with  the  world,  because  he  did  not  belong 
to  it.  A  soul  is  happy  in  the  place  for  which  it  is  born  :  if  it 
disagrees  with  that  place,  it  is  not  born  for  it.  The  super¬ 
natural  element  found  itself  in  a  material  mass,  and  was  not 
at  home  in  it ;  and  uneasiness  and  melancholy  resulted  from 
the  soul’s  lodgement  in  a  lower  world  than  that  which  it 
aspired  to. 

He  had  another  mark  of  his  nature,  besides  his  sufferings, 
and  that  was — his  consolations.  His  fate,  once  submitted  and 
bowed  to  by  the  hero,  the  gods  did  not  leave  their  son  to  him¬ 
self,  or  refuse  him  the  consolation  which  they  made  him  need. 
If  he  supplicated  all  nature  to  feel  for  him,  and  invoked  “  the 
air  divine,  and  winds,  and  the  eternal  rivers,  and  ocean’s  count- 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell . 


236 

less  smiles,  and  the  all-nourishing  earth,  and  the  all-seeing  sun / 
to  see  what  had  been  done  to  him,  and  sympathise  with  his 
wrongs,  he  did  not  call  in  vain.  For  him  the  air  breathed, 
the  winds  whispered,  the  rivers  flowed,  the  ocean  rolled ;  the 
melodies  of  earth  and  sky  were  all  for  him  ;  he  understood  and 
he  imbibed  them ;  he  listened  and  heard,  in  nature’s  stirs  and 
sounds,  things  higher  than  nature,  and  her  words  had  a  mean¬ 
ing  to  him  which  they  had  not  to  others.  They  were  sweet, 
significant,  and  sympathetic :  he  aided  them  by  his  own  skill ; 
and,  as  he  sat  on  the  sea-shore,  the  music  of  his  lyre  blended 
with  the  music  of  the  waves,  to  soothe  and  calm  his  spirits. 
Nature  in  ministering  to  the  favourite  of  the  gods,  threw  aside 
her  veil,  and  showed  another  world  behind  her,  and  super¬ 
natural  forms  approaching  him,  with  tender  and  compassionate 
looks.  The  caves  of  ocean  heard  his  sighs,  and  all  the 
bright  nymphs  came  up,  and  flocked  around  him  ;  and  the 
goddess  of  the  sea  heard,  as  she 

“  Sat  with  her  old  sire  in  his  deeps,  and  instantly  appeared 
Up  from  the  grey  sea  like  a  cloud  ;  sat  by  his  side,  and  said, 

‘  Why  weeps  my  son  ?  W  hat  grieves  thee  ?  ’  ” 

He  was  a  sufferer  for  deeds  of  goodness  in  wilder,  more  de¬ 
solate,  more  savage  scenes.  He  was  manacled,  chained,  fastened 
with  iron  to  the  rock ;  he  was  upbraided  and  reviled  by  the 
demons  who  were  the  executioners  of  his  sentence,  and  then 
left  alone  with  earth  and  air,  barren  desert  and  Caucasian  soli¬ 
tude  around  him.  Yet  even  here  the  sweet  springs  opened ; 
consolations  that  were  never  thought  of  came  from  their  depths 
and  hiding-places  ;  and  from  the  far-off  ocean,  again,  a  sound 
is  heard,  a  rustling  in  the  air ;  and  while  he  fears  something 
dreadful,  and  begins  to  shudder,  a  serene  voice  says  softly  in 
his  ear, — “Be  not  afraid;  the  nymphs  of  Ocean  are  we.  We 
heard  the  iron  sound :  it  rung  through  our  caves.  And  we 
made  bold,  and  shook  off  maiden  modesty,  and  came  to  comfort 
you.” 

In  this  way  the  hero’s  character  and  position  disclose, 
throughout,  the  unearthly  type  on  which  he  is  formed.  The 
rage  invincible,  the  lion-grasp,  the  war  with  men  and  beasts, 
are  not  what  make  him  heroic ;  he  might  have  all  these,  and  still 


Carlyle s  Cromwell 


237 


only  be  an  animal  monster  and  prodigy,  a  beast  more  powerful 
and  dreadful  than  other  beasts.  What  makes  him  heroic  is  a 
certain  fine  element,  a  supernatural  vein ;  a  nature  which  does 
not  mix  with  the  common  human  mass,  but  cuts  clean  and  dis¬ 
tinct,  like  some  pure  metal,  through  it.  Force  may  give  the 
foreground  of  the  view,  the  strong  shadows  which  throw  out 
the  character  and  set  it  off  by  contrast ;  but  it  is  not 
that  character  itself.  This  does  not  supply  the  charm,  the 
poetry,  the  interest.  The  interest  comes  from  the  hero’s  rest 
rather  than  his  motion ;  from  the  blow  he  feels  rather  than  the 
one  he  strikes  ;  from  himself,  and  not  from  his  successes  ;  from 
that  part  of  his  character  which  is  out  of  the  world,  and  not 
from  that  part  which  is  in  it.  And  in  proportion  as  the  great 
men  whom  history  brings  before  us  have  this  character,  in 
proportion  as  they  rise  above  the  greatness  of  strength  and  suc¬ 
cess,  and  show  that  they  lived,  throughout  their  career,  in  a 
higher  atmosphere  of  feeling  than  this  world’s  stimulants  can 
create,  in  that  degree  they  are  heroic ;  in  that  degree,  though 
they  may  be  mixtures  and  startling  ones,  they  come  within  the 
poetical  definition. 

Wholly  departing,  then,  from  this  type  of  the  heroic,  the 
philosophy  before  us  has  set  up  another  standard,  and  another 
man ;  and  while  the  hero  of  poetry  fundamentally  does  not  be¬ 
long  to  this  world,  Mr.  Carlyle’s  fundamentally  does.  His  hero 
is  an  actual  portion  of  the  world,  part  of  the  vis  naturae  of  this 
present  system,  an  offspring  of  that  power  of  motion,  good,  bad, 
or  indifferent,  in  mental  nature,  which  influences,  controls,  pro¬ 
duces.  He  belongs  to  the  universe  of  action,  as  a  plant  does 
to  that  of  vegetation ;  and  he  grows  out  of  the  world’s  vigour, 
sap,  and  vitality.  The  hero  of  poetry  has  his  strength  as  an 
appendage,  Mr.  Carlyle’s  has  it  as  his  essence.  Power,  in  the 
shape  of  penetrating  intellect,  or  daring  ardour,  or  strong  right 
hand,  constitutes  him.  The  instanced  hero  may,  or  may  not, 
have  other  qualities  :  the  generalised  one  has  this  only.  And 
the  residuum  which  is  left,  after  abstracting  distinctions  from 
Mahomet,  the  medieval  Churchmen,  and  Cromwell,  Johnson 
and  Voltaire,  Kousseau  and  Dante,  presents  power,  and  power 
pure,  as  the  common  heroism  of  all.  Mr.  Carlyle’s  hero  is  a 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


238 

pantheistic  creation.  The  world,  from  beginning  to  end,  is  in 
a  state  of  motion ;  that  motion  indicates  a  force  ;  that  force  is 
the  world’s  soul  and  animating  principle.  A11  anima  mundi 
deity  is  thus  made,  who  becomes  the  source  of  greatness  and 
inspiration.  In  proportion  as  minds  are  in  communication  with 
that  universal  Force,  and  derive  strength  and  energy  from  it, 
in  that  proportion  they  are  necessarily  divine  men,  demigods, 
and  heroes.  As  impersonations  of  the  world’s  life  and  reality, 
they  are  emanations  of  its  god ;  and  they  deserve  the  worship 
of  all  real,  hearty,  and  genuine  minds.  The  hero  of  poetry,  and 
that  of  Mr.  Carlyle’s  philosophy,  are  both  godlike,  both  divinely 
born,  possess  both  a  kind  of  divinity,  according  to  the  respec¬ 
tive  systems  to  which  they  belong.  But  the  one  is  a  moral,  the 
other  a  physical  creation ;  the  one  is  the  hero  of  religion  and 
the  other  of  pantheism. 

In  ethical  language,  one  of  these  theories  chooses  strength, 
the  other  beauty,  as  its  standard.  A  coarse  and,  at  the  same 
time,  a  narrow  and  confined  view  of  character,  is  the  result 
of  the  pantheistic  choice.  Mr.  Carlyle  looks  out  for  one  noisy, 
tumultuous,  obtrusive  faculty;  one  that  comes  out  and  marches 
upon  the  open  area  of  the  world,  and  astonishes  us  by  its 
feats ;  but  which  has  debased  as  much  as  it  has  ennobled  man, 
and  which  has  disfigured  quite  as  much  as  it  has  moulded 
him.  He  takes  the  faculty  of  moving  and  acting  as  such,  and 
overlooks  its  coarseness  in  its  power,  its  materialism  in  its  big¬ 
ness,  its  hardness  and  poverty  internal  for  the  largeness  of  its 
outward  field.  He  commits  himself  to  one  part  of  human 
nature,  and  that  an  inferior  part.  He  goes  off  upon  a  swung ; 
he  is  carried  away  by  an  eccentric  oblique  impetus,  and  throws 
himself  into  a  grotesque,  monstrous,  and  one-eyed  philosophy. 
He  connects  in  his  mind  always  form  with  shadow,  chaos  witli 
reality.  He  likes  the  real,  and  therefore  he  likes  the  chaotic 
too ;  and  thinks  it  so  much  clear  gain,  in  point  of  greatness, 
when  the  world  goes  back  from  order,  symmetry,  and  law,  to 
rude  and  aboriginal  power  again.  The  region  of  beauty  in 
human  nature  his  eye  catches,  and  no  more.  He  sees  there  is 
one,  but  he  does  not  enter  into  it,  or  allow  himself  that  rest 
and  serenity  of  mind  in  which  he  could  imbibe  its  scenery  and 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell 


239 


forms.  He  sees  tire  beautiful  as  a  fact  in  the  moral  world,  but 
he  does  not  give  it  its  place.  He  sees  fine  feelings,  tendernesses, 
and  sensibilities  in  it,  but  they  are  evanescences,  and  mingle 
immediately  with,  and  are  absorbed  in,  the  dominant  mass  of 
materialism  and  physical  greatness.  The  poet  made  beauty  the 
dominant  quality ;  he  gave  it  the  supremacy ;  he  gave  it  the 
divine,  immortal  seat  in  man’s  nature,  and  raised  it  to  the 
“  templet  serena.”  And  in  doing  so,  he  took  a  larger  view.  He 
saw  all  that  there  was  in  human  nature,  all  its  powers,  talents, 
gifts,  capabilities ;  its  strength  and  its  versatility ;  though  he 
subordinated  them  all  to  the  standard  of  the  /caXov ,  and  made 
a  true  and  inward  moral  grace  of  character  the  result  towards 
which  all  in  human  nature  should  work  and  tend.  He  did 
more  justice  to  human  nature  than  the  philosophy  before  us 
does,  and  would  not  allow  the  tranquil  and  calm,  and,  to 
some  eyes,  poor  and  feeble  features  of  it,  to  be  shoved  aside  or 
buried. 

The  physical  and  poetical  standards  of  heroism  thus  take 
their  respective  lines.  The  one  is  latitudinarian  and  omni¬ 
genous.  It  views  all  greatness,  good  and  bad,  in  one  common 
aspect,  collects  all  on  one  common  ground,  and  assembles  a 
whole  world  of  mixed  and  heterogeneous  power  upon  its  area. 
The  poetical  standard  selects  and  forms  a  school.  Its  line  runs, 
like  a  marble  vein,  over  the  world  of  history ;  and  it  hands 
down,  in  an  irregular,  but  perceptible  descent  of  minds  from 
the  first — through  ages  ancient  and  modern,  and  in  classical, 
chivalrous,  and  other  shapes — its  sacred  and  pure  gift.  A  char¬ 
acter  almost  indefinable,  but  very  distinct  to  the  eye,  old  and 
traditionary,  yet  always  young,  and  never  obsolete,  marks  this 
heroic  descent  and  succession.  Mr.  Carlyle  may  raise  a  mighty 
Babel  of  greatness,  and  rend  the  air  with  the  bray  of  discor¬ 
dant  instruments,  the  clang  of  brass,  and  noises  from  the 
stupendous  throat  of  his  hundred- headed  world.  Poetry  will 
reject  the  unseemly  din,  and  retire  to  her  own  domain.  All 
sound  is  not  music  :  all  power  is  not  heroism.  She  tunes  and 
tempers  her  greatness,  and  makes  it  musical.  Her  note  is 
clear  and  fine,  a  unity,  and  not  a  chaos  of  sound  ;  she  patronises 
one  essential  spirit,  and  one  only,  in  her  great  men.  And  if 


240 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 

asked  what  right  she  has  to  her  exclusive  standard,  and  why 
she  admits  some  greatness,  and  rejects  other,  from  her  heroic 
ground  ?  her  answer  is  easy.  She  has  a  right  to  her  view,  just 
as  any  philosophy  has  to  its  view.  She  forms  her  standard  of 
a  hero ;  and  in  her  opinion  no  one  is  such  who  does  not  answer 
to  it.  She  has,  moreover,  established  her  own  sense  of  the 
word ;  and  literature  receives  it  with  that  sense  attached  to  it. 
She  has  possessed  herself  of  a  domain,  and  she  must  decide  and 
rule  upon  it.  If  asked,  therefore,  what  our  test  of  heroism  is, 
we  answer  simply,  the  poetical  one.  That  greatness  which  is 
the  legitimate  object  of  poetical  praise  is  an  heroic  one ;  that 
which  is  not,  is  not.  If  some  great  men  are  poetical  characters, 
and  others  are  not,  the  latter  must  take  the  consequences  of  the 
distinction ;  but  hero  is  a  poetical  term,  and  none  but  poetical 
characters  have  a  right  to  it.  Whoever  can  think  Knox,  Crom¬ 
well,  and  Voltaire  poetical  characters,  to  him  they  are  heroes ; 
but  he  must  decide  the  question  whether  they  are  or  not 
through  the  medium  of  poetry. 

An  obvious  corollary  results  from  the  comparison  we  have 
been  drawing.  Mr.  Carlyle  is  guilty  of  an  express  abuse  of 
language,  in  applying  the  epithet  heroic  to  that  discordant 
jumble  of  human  talents  and  qualities  to  which  he  has  applied 
it.  He  has  a  perfect  right,  as  a  philosopher,  to  create  his  great 
man,  and  to  create  him  on  what  principle  he  pleases ;  but  he 
has  no  right  to  give  him  a  name,  which  has  already  its  owner, 
and  to  pillage  an  old-established  system  of  thought  of  its  lawful 
and  hereditary  property.  He  has  no  right  to  adorn  his  naked 
originalities  with  the  seizures  of  intellectual  violence.  He  has 
no  right  to  divide  a  word  from  its  legitimate  and  authentic  use  ; 
that  to  which  the  voice  of  poetry,  and  the  expressed  sentiment 
of  mankind  through  successive  ages,  have  bound  it ;  and  attach 
it,  endowed  with  a  new  meaning,  to  a  new  and  hostile  theory. 
His  great  man  of  force  is  what  he  is  to  the  eye  of  fact ;  but  to 
the  eye  of  language  he  is,  unquestionably,  no  more  a  hero  than 
he  is  an  angel.  He  is  not  the  person  whom  the  ascertained 
feeling  of  the  human  race  regards  as  heroic.  We  shall  indulge 
in  no  indignation  at  the  pollution  of  a  sacred  name,  or  complain 
of  a  touch  because  it  vulgarises  and  desecrates.  We  shall 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell . 


241 


assert  here  the  simple  right  of  property,  which  established 
thought  has  in  its  own  words ;  and  deny  the  right  of  a  new 
philosophy  to  seize  and  appropriate  them. 

We  turn  to  another  side  of  Mr.  Carlyle’s  teaching.  The 
Puritan  movement  figures  in  these  volumes  as  a  great  heroic 
outbreak,  a  semi- divine  manifestation  of  power  and  life,  a  great 
birth,  a  magnificent  eruption  from  the  deep  reservoir  of  spiritual 
nature.  But  one  special  and  pressing  reason,  over  and  above 
that  which  their  peculiar  character  furnishes,  attaches  Mr. 
Carlyle  to  it.  The  Puritans  were  revolutionary  heroes.  They 
upset  an  existing  system.  They  were  a  class  of  political  and 
religious  reformers.  He  thinks  the  exemplar  a  useful  one  for 
these  times  ;  and  his  Puritanism,  in  one  aspect,  is  a  repetition 
of  his  “  French  Ke volution  ”  and  “  Chartism.”  He  says,  the 
world  is  now  dried  up,  barren,  dead ;  there  is  no  reality,  no 
life.  Quackeries,  shows,  formulae,  superficial  semblances, 
shadows,  chimeras  dominate.  “All  England  stands  wringing 
its  hands,  asking  itself,  nigh  desperate,  What  farther  ?  Eeform 
Bill  proves  a  failure ;  Benthamese  Eadicalism,  the  gospel  of 
‘  enlightened  selfishness,’  dies  out,  or  dwindles  into  five -point 
Chartism.  What  next  are  we  to  hope  or  try  ?  Five-point 
Charter,  Free  Trade  ;  Church  Extension,  Sliding-Scale ;  what, 
in  Heaven’s  name,  are  we  next  to  attempt  ?  The  case  is 
pressing,  and  one  of  the  most  complicated  in  the  world.  Never 
had  God’s  message  to  pierce  thicker  integuments  into  heavier 
ears.”  In  this  state  of  things  he  grasps  and  puts  before  us  a 
strong  revolutionary  character,  and  an  age  of  stir  and  upset. 
The  world  wants  new  blood.  He  gives  it.  He  offers  living 
strong  reality.  He  conjures  up  a  revolutionary  scene,  and  bids 
us  imbibe  strength  and  ardour  from  the  sight.  And  these 
volumes  proceed,  in  part,  from  the  writer’s  desire  for  a  large 
social  and  political  renovation. 

One  or  two  words  then  on  our  author  as  a  reformer.  We 
quite  agree  with  Mr.  Carlyle  in  thinking  that  the  world  wants 
amendment.  There  are  few  a^es  in  which  it  has  not  wanted  it. 
But  we  must  question  whether  he  has  adopted  the  proper  mode 
of  administering  the  chastisement  and  executing  the  change. 
The  process  of  teaching  is  not  suitably  conducted  by  railing 

M.E  -I.]  Q 


242 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


and  sneering,  flinging  irony  and  gibes  about,  inventing  epithets 
and  calling  names.  What  end  can  be  answered  by  that  per¬ 
petual,  inexhaustible  vituperation,  which  cares  not  for  shape, 
limit,  temper,  or  dignity,  so  that  it  be  vituperation ;  so  that  it 
only  feels  its  spirit  up,  its  mouth  open,  and  the  words  going 
forth  ?  What  solemn  impression  can  be  created  by  that  storm 
and  hurly-burly  of  nicknames  which  Mr.  Carlyle  raises  ?  What 
can  such  a  lesson  principally  do,  but  make  men  stare  ?  What 
age  was  ever  awed  or  subdued  by  the  most  original  and  viva¬ 
cious  discharges  of  hisses  and  groans  ?  And  how  is  the  present 
one  to  be  expected  to  listen  with  much  reverence  to  one 
raging  tongue,  and  one  hoarse  throat  interminably  going, 
reproaching  it  with  quackeries,  shams,  shadows,  forms,  chimeras, 
semblances,  cants,  hearsays,  lies,  basenesses,  falsehoods,  delu¬ 
sions,  impostures,  nightmares,  Mammonisms,  Dilettantisms, 
Midas* eared  philosophers,  double-barrelled  Aristocracies,  cash- 
payments,  Laissez-faires,  egotisms,  blockheadisms,  flunkeyisnis, 
dastardisms,  lacquered  sumptuosities,  belauded  sophistries, 
serpent  graciosities,  confusions,  opacities,  asphyxias,  vacuities, 
phantasm agorisms,  phantasms,  nether  darknesses,  abyss,  chaos, 
and  night  ?  “  Our  poor  English  existence,”  with  “  its  formulae 

and  pulpetries,  its  lath  and  plaster  hat,  seven  feet  high  upon 
wheels,  perambulating  the  streets;” — with  “  its  Bobus  and 
Company,  Pugshott  and  Company,  black  and  white  surplices, 
Controversies,  Mammon  and  Shotbelt  Gospels,  sham  woven 
cloth,  and  Dillettanti  legislations,  devils-dust,  withered  flimsi¬ 
nesses,  godless  basenesses,  deaf  dead  infinite  injustices,  accursed 
ironbellies  of  Phalaris  bulls,”  is  not  likely  to  be  benefited  by  an 
instruction  which  assumes  such  a  shape,  tone,  and  manner. 
The  world,  whether  a  sham  or  a  real  one,  whether  good,  bad,  or 
indifferent,  is  going  along  the  street  to  its  daily  work,  and  on 
turning  a  corner  sees  a  man  mounted  on  a  tub,  making  faces 
at  it.  The  world  looks  for  an  instant  on  the  tortuous,  wild, 
attitudinising  figure,  on  the  open  mouth  and  straining  throat, 
says,  Strange  man  !  and  goes  on  again.  And  it  would  be  diffi¬ 
cult  to  deny  the  right  of  the  world  to  do  so.  It  does  so  often 
enough  when  it  has  no  right;  but  here  it  has  this  vantage-ground. 

He  will  say,  perhaps,  that  this  is  merely  his  style,  and  that 


243 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 

he  has  real  meaning  underneath  it ;  and  he  will  charge  with 
unreality  the  attachment  of  an  importance  to  style  and  form. 
But  style  and  form  are  important.  They  are  an  expression  of 
the  man  :  we  cannot  separate  the  external  from  the  internal, 
the  expression  from  the  idea  :  we  want  both.  A  religious 
teacher  cannot,  as  such,  either  paint  his  face  or  stripe  his  legs  ; 
the  difference  would  be  a  purely  external  one,  but  his  congre¬ 
gation  would  not  listen  to  him  with  such  an  outside.  The 
consciousness  of  a  real  vocation  to  reform  an  age  should  fix 
seriousness  on  every  feature,  should  mould  and  temper,  subdue 
and  chasten,  the  whole  man.  A  work  upon  the  mind  is  a 
weight  upon  it ;  it  should  show  itself  as  such.  Is  not  this  what 
a  man  feels  on  giving  the  least  serious  advice  to  one  fellow- 
creature  ?  the  mere  approach  of  face  to  face,  and  eye  to  eye,  for 
one  moment,  with  a  person  whom  he  is  really  advising,  en¬ 
genders,  as  if  by  some  mesmeric  impulse,  a  seriousness  which 
communicates  itself  to  the  whole  air.  He  feels  he  is  doing  a 
grave  thing.  Beally  felt,  this  consciousness  is  as  effective  an 
internal  check  as  any  in  the  whole  department  of  morals ;  it 
makes  a  man  necessarily  curb  and  tame  the  whole  expression  of 
himself,  and  it  impresses  upon  him  the  fact  that  he  is  not  his  own 
master ;  that  he  is  not  to  do  what  he  likes,  and  has  not  the 
right  to  run  into  indefinite  expansion  and  vigour.  The  task  of 
influencing  modifies  even  innocent  mental  liberty,  and  prunes 
even  natural  luxuriance  and  life.  People  have  a  right  to  expect 
that  one  who  comes  to  reform  and  teach  them  should  carry 
some  external  marks  of  a  master  about  him,  and  show  the 
authoritativeness  of  self  control.  If  he  is  run  away  with,  he 
is  not  the  man  to  lead.  Mr.  Carlyle’s  philosophy  will  tell  him 
that  the  form  is  part  of  the  thing.  Measure,  law,  limitation, 
run  through  all  nature,  though  stiffness  and  formality  do  not. 
They  are  not  to  be  despised  with  impunity.  The  word  is  part 
of  the  meaning,  the  author’s  style  is  part  of  his  mind.  And 
especially  is  form  essential  for  a  man  in  dealing  with  his  fellow- 
men.  If  a  writer  thinks  that,  provided  thought  only  have 
strength  and  originality,  it  has  a  right  to  be  chaotic,  he  is 
mistaken.  He  must  reduce  his  chaos  into  form.  He  must  do 
justice  to  himself,  he  must  express  his  own  thoughts  as  those 


244 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


thoughts  themselves  deserve  to  he  expressed.  A  reformer  ought 
not  to  be  a  jabberer  :  we  respect  Mr.  Carlyle’s  genius,  but  he 
undoubtedly  prates.  He  appears  to  think  that  genius  will 
carry  down  everything.  It  will  not.  Genius  requires  a  mind 
to  take  care  of  it,  as  any  other  gift  does.  A  man  should  know 
how  to  use  his  own  genius  :  if  he  does  not,  he  is  just  like  some 
precocious  child,  who  with  deep  thoughts,  and  metaphysical 
shadows  haunting  him,  is  appended  to  them  rather  than  they 
to  him  ;  and  who  possesses  his  own  ideas,  only  as  a  basin  does 
water,  by  containing  them.  Ideas  seem  to  come  out  of  a  for¬ 
ward  child  upon  a  physical  principle :  they  are  drawn  out  of 
him  as  if  by  an  electric  process,  and  the  receptacle  of  them  is 
not  their  master.  With  equal  truth,  the  full-grown  man  some¬ 
times  shows  a  genius  of  which  he  is  nearly  as  little  the  master, 
though  in  another  way  :  a  genius  which  pulls  him  after  it,  and 
does  what  it  likes,  which  bounds,  leaps,  and  dashes  on  at  will, 
and  commits  itself  to  a  combination  of  force  and  chance ;  a 
genius  which  does  not  bend  us  before  the  man,  but  has  its 
separable  value,  as  an  intellectual  material  by  itself.  We  make 
use  of  it  as  we  would  of  any  valuable  rough  ore  from  the  mine, 
and  extract  what  we  like  out  of  it.  This  is  the  general  use 
made  of  Mr.  Carlyle.  He  provides  in  great  force  a  certain  deep 
aboriginal  class  of  ideas,  and  persons  go  to  him  for  them ;  but 
they  give  their  own  application  and  use  to  what  they  take  ; 
they  do  not  accept  the  thinker’s  ;  they  use  his  thought  as  they 
would  so  much  raw  material ;  they  treat  his  mind  as  a  quarry  ; 
and  the  strong,  vigorous,  chaotic  head  is  more  their  servant 
than  their  master. 

What  adds  to  the  unfavourable  impression  produced  by 
Mr.  Carlyle’s  mode  of  teaching,  is  the  fact  that  we  are  totally 
unable  to  discover  what  it  is  which  he  teaches.  He  teaches 
reality  ;  but  what  is  reality  ?  A  man  is  no  more  the  gainer  for 
being  told  simply  that  he  must  be  exceedingly  real,  than  for 
being  told  simply  that  he  must  be  exceedingly  wise.  You  tell 
a  person  ten  times  over  that  he  must  be  wise.  Is  he  to  knit 
his  brows,  to  be  grave,  to  begin  to  generalise  ?  What  is  he  to 
do  in  consequence  of  that  recommendation  ?  So  when  you  tell 
him  in  ten  successive  sentences  to  be  a  reality  :  what  is  he  to 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


245 


do  ?  Is  he  to  shake  himself  ?  Is  he  to  look  determined  and 
irresistible  ?  The  real  difficulty  lies  in  saying  what  is  con¬ 
tained  in  reality,  and  here  Mr.  Carlyle  gives  us  no  informa¬ 
tion.  According  to  him  we  are  real  by  not  being  formulae, 
and  we  avoid  being  formulae  by  being  real.  If  the  perplexed 
inquirer  demands  a  little  more  light,  he  is  told  to  converse  with 
the  abysses.  If  he  is  still  dissatisfied,  he  is  advised  to  plunge 
into  the  eternities.  It  is  not,  however,  a  needlessly  severe  com¬ 
ment  upon  such  explanations  to  say  that  they  rather  require  light 
than  bestow  it.  Mr.  Carlyle  instructs  by  simple  epithets  ;  but 
how  will  a  population  of  valets  and  a  world  of  flunkeys  be 
extricated  from  their  misery  by  being  simply  made  acquainted 
with  their  name  ?  And  what  idea  will  it  convey  to  an  ordi¬ 
nary  tradesman,  farmer,  or  country  gentleman,  to  tell  him  he  is 
a  sham  ?  He  will  not  understand  why  he  is  one  ;  much  less 
how  he  is  to  cease  to  be  one.  He  is  informed  of  a  crowd  of 
semblances  and  shadows  which  surround  him,  but  he  has  been 
accustomed  to  regard  the  world  as  solid,  and  he  feels  easy  on 
the  subject.  If  he  starts  with  thinking  Mr.  Carlyle  a  false 
alarmist,  he  is  not  likely  to  have  his  impression  undone,  for 
Mr.  Carlyle  gives  no  reasons  and  enters  into  no  details.  He 
is  told  he  is  a  sham ;  and  that  he  ought  to  be  a  substance  ;  and 
that  is  all  which  our  author’s  moral  philosophy  tells  him.  He 
must  digest  that  lesson  at  his  leisure,  and  make  out  of  it  what 
he  can.  Mr.  Carlyle’s  Eeality  is  a  magnificent  abstraction  ;  it 
refuses  to  be  caught  and  grasped,  and  will  give  no  account  of 
itself  for  the  satisfaction  of  sublunary  and  practical  curiosity. 
It  wages  an  eternal  war  with  shadows :  it  is  a  disperser  of 
phantoms  ;  lies  flee  before  it ;  formulae  shudder  at  its  approach. 
That  is  all  we  know  of  its  nature  and  its  characteristics.  It 
carries  on  a  great  aerial  battle  nobody  knows  where  ;  and 
teaches  with  sublime  infallibility  nobody  knows  what. 

Moreover,  so  far  as  Mr.  Carlyle  allows  a  faint  notion  of  his 
meaning  to  escape  on  this  subject,  he  appears  to  contradict 
himself,  and  to  praise  under  the  name  of  reality  two  states  of 
mind  which  are  diametrically  opposed  to  each  other.  In 
drawing  his  picture  of  former  heroic  ages  he  insists  upon  the 
intense  reality  of  belief  which  they  respectively  exhibit.  He 


246 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell 


makes  the  stern  ancl  undoubting  faith  which  each  had  in  a 
definite  religion  to  he  the  heroic  element  in  them ;  and  he 
rejoices  in  the  exclusive,  fierce,  unwavering,  enthusiastic,  and 
persecuting  zeal  of  Mahometan,  Catholic,  and  Puritan.  But 
what  he  recommends  to  the  modern  aspirant  to  heroism  is  to 
believe  in  no  definite  religion  at  all.  He  places  himself  in  a 
position  ccb  extra  to  all  religions  :  he  wishes  his  followers  to  do 
the  same.  His  image  of  a  modern  intellectual  hero  makes  him 
a  universalist  and  a  philosophical  spectator  ;  a  contemplator  of 
phenomena,  a  despiser  of  creeds  ;  an  acceptor  of  all  religions, 
and  believer  in  none.  He  praises  furious  faith  in  one  age  and 
fastidious  scepticism  in  another.  He  lays  down  dogmatic  pre-» 
rnises,  and  draws  an-  infidel  conclusion.  The  believing  and 
disbelieving  are  certainly  two  contrary  moral  states  of  mind  ; 
and  we  do  not  understand  how  both  can  be  praised  at  once. 
The  results  upon  the  world,  too,  must  be  wholly  different. 
Does  Mr.  Carlyle  suppose  that  an  ambiguous  neutrality  of 
mind  can  produce  the  same  powerful  and  striking  results  upon 
the  human  mass  that  undoubting  conviction  can  ?  that  a  faith 
which  is  diffused  over  all  religions  is  as  strong  as  that  which 
is  concentrated  in  one  ?  and  that  scepticism  can  be  as  enthusi¬ 
astic  and  effective  as  belief  ?  If  he  does,  we  do  not  envy  his 
knowledge  of  human  nature.  Latitudinarianism  may  have  its 
charms  as  a  philosophy,  but,  Mr.  Carlyle  may  depend  upon  it, 
it  never  has  been,  and  never  will  be,  a  worker.  The  systems 
that  have  done  work  in  the  world  have  been  systems  of  fixed 
belief.  He  contradicts  his  own  facts  and  overthrows  his  own 
test  of  power  when  he  commends  a  philosophical  balance  and 
neutrality  He  cannot  have  intellectual  fastidiousness  and 
enthusiastic  ardour  in  one  system  ;  and  common  sense  rejects 
his  grotesque,  ridiculous,  and  centaurian  image  of  an  evangel¬ 
ising  sceptic  and  Epicurean  prophet  and  reformer. 

Mr.  Carlyle  then  should  know  that  there  may  be  such  a 
thing  as  talking  unreally  of  unreality,  and  canting  against 
cant.  He  talks  against  all  mankind  for  not  acting ;  but  we  do 
not  hear  that  he  himself  has  ever  done  anything  but  the 
former.  He  has  at  his  tongue’s  end  a  set  of  words.  He 
repeats  them  acl  nauseam.  He  sits  in  his  own  chair  and 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell . 


247 


talks.  What  more  suitable  occupation  could  he  pursue,  if  he 
were  himself  a  sham?  We  do  not  want  to  throw  a  slight  011 
all  talking,  for  some  or  other  form  of  the  process  is  necessary 
if  a  man  wants  to  communicate  his  ideas  to  others.  But  the 
talk  of  a  reforming  philosopher  ought  certainly  to  approve 
itself  as  the  issue  of  an  ethical,  and  not  a  mere  feverish, 
industry,  and  ought  to  rise  above  the  gratification  of  mental 
power.  If  he  simply  goes  on  upon  his  swing,  vents  his 
phraseological  exuberance  and  imagination,  and  indulges  in 
one  endless  chaotic  repetition  of  some  favourite  ideas,  his 
genius  and  originality  will  not  of  themselves  save  him  from 
suspicion,  and  the  onus  of  showing  cause  why  he  should  not  be 
considered  a  talker  rests  upon  him. 

Mr.  Carlyle’s  philosophy  has  detained  us  longer  than  we 
intended.  We  now  come  to  the  contents  of  the  present 
volumes.  These  put  before  us,  in  the  first  instance,  as  we  said 
above,  with  much  rude  power  and  vividness,  a  general  type  of 
heroism,  which  the  author  considers  the  Puritan  movement  to 
display.  Puritan  heroism  forms  the  general  ground  of  the 
book,  and  supplies  the  mould  out  of  which  the  individual 
hero  and  chief  exemplar  issues. 

As  revolutionary  heroes  then,  strong  enthusiasts,  upsetters 
of  old  systems  and  established  shows,  and  introducers  of 
forcible  realities, — Mr.  Carlyle  throws  all  the  grandeur  and 
sublime  mysticism  which  his  peculiar  phraseology  can  com¬ 
mand  upon  the  Puritans.  He  talks  of  their  “  armed  appeal  to 
the  invisible  God  of  heaven,”  of  “  heroic  Puritanism,”  “  awful 
Puritanism,”  of  the  “  eternal  melodies  ”  which  flowed,  the 
“  eternal  soul  of  things  ”  which  spake,  in  them.  The  “  abysses, 
the  black  chaotic  whirlwinds,”  produced  them  ;  and  “  the  dark 
element,  the  mother  of  the  lightnings  and  the  splendours,”  was 
their  mother  also.  They  were  in  sympathy  with  the  depths, 
and  they  were  projected  from  the  eternities.  They  were  pro¬ 
phets,  priests,  and  kings.  The  “  flame-gilt  heaven’s  messenger 
taught  men  to  know  God,  0eo?,  the  maker  :  to  know  the 
divine  laws,  the  inner  harmonies  of  the  universe.”  We  might 
add  much  more,  and  are  conscious  we  do  but  imperfect  justice 
to  the  splendour  of  Mr.  Carlyle’s  description. 


248  Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 

Greatness  forced  upon  men  is  no  improvement  to  them. 
The  “  English  Squire  of  the  seventeenth  century,  who  with  his 
Bible  doctrine  like  a  shot  belt  around  him,  very  awful  to  the 
heart  of  the  English  Squire,”  is  made  by  our  author  to  loom 
like  a  portent  through  the  murky  air,  and  is  enveloped  in 
mysticism,  till  we  hardly  know  whether  to  take  him  for  an 
English  squire  or  an  Ossianic  deity,  does  not  benefit  by  the 
grand  ambiguity.  The  awful  visages  of  Puritanical  Colonels, 
Captains,  and  Corporals  do  not  gain  from  the  unearthly  shade 
imparted  by  a  too  anxious  pencil.  The  Puritans  are  under  no 
obligation  to  Mr.  Carlyle  for  his  portrait.  He  makes  them 
majestic.  But  they  were  not  majestic.  They  were  not 
majestic,  and  they  cannot  be  made  so  either  by  Mr.  Carlyle  or 
by  any  one  else.  They  were  fierce,  courageous,  enthusiastic, 
rigid  men  ;  very  awkward,  long-winded,  and  pompous  ;  with  a 
grimness  and  solemnity  of  an  absurd  cast.  They  affected  sub¬ 
limity,  obtruded  religion,  made  free  with  Scripture,  and  spoke 
through  their  noses.  They  were  tremendous  on  the  field 
of  battle,  ridiculous  out  of  it.  As  some  poets  are  only  striking 
when  they  horrify,  the  Puritans  were  only  awful  when  they 
were  charging.  They  depended  on  the  drawn  swords,  the 
black  moving  columns,  and  all  the  terrible  iron  features  of  a 
field  of  battle,  for  what  greatness  they  had.  So  long  as  they 
speak,  or  move,  or  look  only  as  soldiers,  their  stern  courage 
befriends  them,  and  they  show  a  hard  and  insipid  greatness  ; 
but  take  their  character  out  of  its  iron  case,  and  it  shows  its 
weakness  ;  it  cannot  express  itself  upon  open  ground  without 
exposing  itself ;  and  it  runs  into  contortions,  nodosities,  and 
grimaces.  Such  is  the  image  of  Puritanism  which  authentic 
accounts  have  handed  down.  The  party  have  managed,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  to  get  themselves  permanently  laughed  at. 
They  have  allowed  an  absurd  portrait  to  come  down  to  us. 
National  tradition  has  settled  their  character,  and  the  author 
of  Hudibras  and  Sir  Walter  Scott  are  felt  to  speak  with 
authority. 

The  Puritans  therefore  do  not  wear  their  grandeur  to  much 
purpose  in  Mr.  Carlyle’s  pages.  Their  sublimity  sits  awk¬ 
wardly  upon  them.  He  is  obviously  putting  a  dress  on  them, 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


249 


and  dramatising  them.  He  is  obviously  vapouring  and  spout¬ 
ing.  A  bombastic  struggle  with  fact  pervades  his  descriptions  ; 
and  he  has  to  resist  throughout  the  uniform  tradition  of  two 
centuries.  He  is  aware  of  his  difficulty,  and  he  complains  and 
remonstrates.  An  old  established  joke  annoys  him  at  every 
turn.  He  wages  a  perpetual  war  with  “  derisive  epithets.” 
He  has  perpetually  to  be  saying — you  must  not  laugh  at  my 
heroes.  He  protests  against  such  names  as  “  Barebones  Par¬ 
liament.”  He  stands  up  with  exceeding  gravity  for  the 
heraldic  dignity  of  the  Barebones  assembly ;  which  contained, 
he  assures  us,  “  actual  peers,  one  or  two ;  and  founder  of 
peerage  families,  two  or  three.”  He  stands  up  for  the  actual 
person  of  Mr.  Praise-God  Barebones  himself,  and  for  Mr. 
Barebones’  father  and  mother.  “What  though  Mr.  Praise- 
God  Barebone,  ‘  the  leather  merchant  ’  in  Fleet  Street,  be,  as 
all  mortals  must  admit,  a  member  of  it  ?  The  fault,  I  hope,  is 
forgiveable.  Praise  God,  though  he  deals  in  leather,  and  has 
a  name  which  can  be  mis-spelt,  one  discerns  to  be  the  son  of 
pious  parents ;  to  be  himself  a  man  of  piety,  understanding 
and  weight — and  even  of  considerable  private  capital.”  A 
mystical  apotheosis  of  the  ill-used  assembly  then  follows,  and 
this  “  fabulous  Barebones  Parliament  is  seen  standing  dim,  in 
the  heart  of  extinct  centuries,  as  a  recognisable  fact,”  etc. 
His  remedy  for  this  great  difficulty  is  to  make  all  unfavourable 
Puritanism  a  fabulous  creation,  raised  after  the  real  Puritan 
age.  He  wonders  to  see  how  “  earnest  Puritanism  was 
already,  in  one  generation,  hung  on  the  gallows,  or  thrown  out 
in  St.  Margaret’s  Churchyard,  how  the  whole  history  of  it  had 
grown  mythical,  and  men  were  ready  to  swallow  all  manner  of 
nonsense  concerning  it.”  He  supposes  an  “  accumulated  guano 
of  human  stupor  ”  to  have  overwhelmed  them ;  a  mass  of 
malignant  and  baseless  prejudice,  proceeding  from  boisterous 
cavaliers  and  the  courtiers  of  the  Eestoration,  to  have  sup¬ 
planted  the  real  account  of  the  party  from  the  first,  and 
palmed  a  hostile  forgery  of  its  own  on  the  world ;  and  he 
pleads  for  a  true  and  original  Puritanism,  which  has  never 
been  understood,  and  never  been  recorded,  against  this  false 
and  base  historical  aftergrowth.  But  we  ask,  What  sterling 


250  Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 

character  in  any  age  would  allow  itself  to  he  thus  over¬ 
whelmed,  and  permit  such  an  aftergrowth  to  supplant  it  ? 
Should  not  such  want  of  strength,  on  Mr.  Carlyle’s  own  theory, 
tell  ipso  facto  against  it  ?  Why  is  he  helping  men,  who  cannot 
help  themselves,  and  struggling  with  his  own  deity  of  fact  ? 
A  really  fine  type  of  character  will  not  let  itself  be  put  down 
in  such  a  way  as  Mr.  Carlyle  supposes  the  Puritan  to  have  been. 
It  may  be  much  slandered  and  misrepresented,  and  a  school 
of  history  may  rise  up  that  will  place  it  in  a  false  light  before 
the  public  eye,  and  keep  it  so  for  an  indefinitely  long  time  ; 
but  still  it  always  will  have  some  true  descriptions  and  repre¬ 
sentations  of  itself  to  appeal  to  when  people  choose  to  go  to 
them ;  it  never  will  lose  its  proper  witnesses  and  evidences, 
however  these  may  for  a  time  be  shoved  out  of  sight.  Take 
the  character  of  Becket  and  the  medieval  Churchmen,  for 
example ;  it  has  been  depreciated  by  a  modern  class  of 
historians,  and  an  entirely  untrue  picture  of  it  put  forward, 
and  accepted  by  the  world  ;  but  go  a  little  farther  back,  and 
you  have  the  true  picture  :  you  have  it  in  documents  and 
regular  history,  contemporary  and  immediately  subsequent  to 
them.  It  is  only  the  difference  between  staying  lower  down, 
or  going  farther  up,  the  stream  of  history.  But  the  heroic 
Puritanism  which  Mr.  Carlyle  refers  to,  as  the  real  and 
genuine,  in  distinction  from  the  fabulous  and  misrepresented 
one,  exists  in  no  history  or  documents  contemporary  or  sub¬ 
sequent  ;  it  is  nowhere.  It  exists  only  as  an  hypothetical 
contrast  to  all  Puritanism  known  and  recorded.  Let  Mr. 
Carlyle  bow  to  the  fact.  If  the  Puritan  character  has  thus 
suffered  itself  to  be  overwhelmed,  and  allowed  a  derisive 
description  of  it  to  occupy  the  field,  it  follows  that  that 
character  was  of  a  nature  to  be  laughed  down.  Lias  this  been 
the  case  with  other  large  types  of  character  which  have  been  in 
the  world, — with  the  chivalrous,  for  example  ?  The  chivalrous 
character  had  its  absurdities  and  extravagances  in  abundance  ; 
and  its  unreal  and  theatrical  offshoots  were  laughed  down. 
Cervantes  put  down  Quixotism ;  but  the  chivalrous  type  itself 
has  maintained  its  place,  and  appeals,  and  always  will,  to  our 
poetical  feelings.  Nobody  laughs  at  the  Crusaders.  Nothing 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell 


251 


really  high  was  ever  laughed  down  in  this  world.  And  if  the 
Puritans  have  been  laughed  down,  is  it  not  because  they 
deserve  to  be  ?  The  Puritan  type  has  exposed  itself  to  the 
full  aim  of  ridicule ;  and  ridicule  has  shot  it  through.  That 
is  the  explanation.  A  fine  form  of  character  can  stand  the 
test  of  ridicule  ;  a  different  form  cannot.  The  former  rebukes 
ridicule,  deadens  it,  shames  it,  makes  it  ipso  facto  null,  uncon¬ 
genial,  out  of  place  altogether.  Eidicule  feels  its  power  with 
such  a  character  as  the  Puritan ;  it  knows  its  vantage-ground, 
and  clutches  its  prey  ;  it  sees  something  below  and  above 
itself.  Pteligion  has  sternly  revenged  herself  on  those  who 
made  her  ridiculous ;  she  has  been  made  vile,  and  she  has 
thrown  into  the  mire  her  cheapeners.  She  had  been  made  by 
human  mediums  to  look  horrible,  malignant,  sanguinary,  insane 
before,  but  never  ridiculous.  Pagan  sacrifices,  and  Mahometan 
sword,  persecuting  fanatic  narrow  minds  had  thrown  their 
stamp  upon  her,  but  they  had  distorted  rather  than  humiliated 
her.  It  was  left  for  the  Puritans  to  make  religion  laughable  ; 
and  effectually  has  she  turned  the  laugh  upon  them.  It  seems 
to  be  part  of  the  mystery  of  religion,  that  in  proportion  as  her 
reality  is  awful  the  affectation  of  her  is  ludicrous.  And  the 
whole  force  of  this  ludicrous  result  turns  upon  the  affectors. 
The  sublime  retaliates  on  those  who  lower  it,  and  in  the  act 
of  being  made  ridiculous  renders  those  ridiculous  who  make 
it  so.  To  the  appetite  for  the  yl\oiov  the  stimulants  of  the 
pseudo-religious  department  are  just  the  most  potent  ones. 
And  the  Puritans  have  felt  the  consequence  of  a  just  law,  and 
their  treatment  of  religion  has  brought  them  under  ridicule’s 
very  focus  and  quintessential  sting. 

We  come  now  to  the  individual  hero  of  these  volumes. 
Cromwell  was  not  an  ordinary  Puritan,  and  is  not  to  be  mixed 
up  with  his  class.  He  is  a  man  sui  generis.  He  rises  out  of 
the  Puritanical  movement,  and  receives  its  mould,  but  he  is  a 
user  of  Puritanism  full  as  much  as,  and  rather  more  than,  he 
is  a  believer  in  it.  Mr.  Carlyle  has  undoubtedly  in  Cromwell 
a  great  man  to  portray ;  and  we  will  allow  him,  on  his  own 
ground,  to  exult  in  his  favourite.  Great  as  Cromwell  un¬ 
doubtedly  was,  however,  he  must  be  submitted  to  other  tests 


252 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


besides  that  of  power  or  success.  Mr.  Carlyle’s  explanation  of 
liis  character  is  not  a  full  and  complete  one,  even  though  it 
may  bring  him  out  in  one  or  other  aspect  successfully.  His 
Cromwellian  hypothesis  is  far  too  simple  a  one  to  meet  the 
facts  and  difficulties  of  the  case.  And  his  fairness  and 
candour,  we  must  add,  full  as  often  fail  him  in  his  work  as  his 
sagacity  and  discrimination.  A  rough  outline  of  Cromwell, 
which,  with  the  aid  of  the  book  before  us,  we  will  endeavour 
to  draw,  will  explain  what  we  mean. 

The  year  1643  saw  Cromwell  fairly  started  on  his  great 
military  and  political  career.  He  was  then  forty-four  years 
old,  and  the  extravagances  of  a  coarse  and  dissolute  youth  had 
been  superseded  and  forgotten  in  the  labours  of  the  farm  at 
St.  Ives,  in  the  management  of  a  strict  Puritanical  household, 
amongst  whom  he  had  exercised  the  gift  of  preaching  and 
expounding ;  and  lastly,  in  the  public  exertions  of  Parliament, 
where  he  had  spoken  with  energy  and  effect,  had  shown  his 
talents  and  enthusiasm,  and  had  made  himself  a  man  about 
whom  politicians  and  long-headed  men  hinted,  conjectured, 
and  prophesied.  Of  his  appearance  in  the  House  Sir  Philip 
Warwick  speaks : — 

“  He  had  a  plain  cloth  suit,  which  seemed  to  have  been 
made  by  an  ill  country  tailor ;  his  linen  was  plain,  and  not 
very  clean  ;  and  I  remember  a  speck  or  two  of  blood  on  his 
little  band.  His  hat  was  without  a  hat-band.  His  stature 
was  of  a  good  size  ;  his  sword  stuck  close  to  his  side :  his 
countenance  was  swollen  and  reddish,  his  voice  sharp  and  un- 
tuneable,  and  his  eloquence  full  of  fervour.”  Cromwell  out  of 
Parliament  was  also  beginning  to  be  great,  and  some  of  his  bold 
guerilla  feats  at  the  first  outbreak  of  hostilities  between  the 
King  and  Parliament  had  done  much  to  encourage  and  inspirit 
his  side.  The  High  Sheriff  of  Herts,  Thomas  Conisby, 
Esquire,  was  executing  a  commission  of  array  in  the  market¬ 
place  of  St.  Albans,  with  his  posse  comitatus  about  him,  when 
Cromwell’s  troopers  “  dashed  suddenly  upon  him,  laid  him  fast, 
not  without  difficulty.  He  was  seized  by  six  troopers,  but 
rescued  by  a  royalist  multitude  ;  then  twenty  troopers  again 
seized  him,  barricadoed  the  inn  yard,  conveyed  him  off  to 


Carlyles  Cromwell.  253 

London.  The  House  sent  him  to  the  Tower,  where  he  had  to 
lie  for  several  years.” 

A  man  like  Cromwell,  commencing  a  career,  seeing  a 
great  struggle  before  him,  a  great  shock  begun,  elements  of 
terror  and  confusion  all  around,  and  forces  at  work  which  will 
either  get  under  one  man’s  control  or  another’s,  does  one  thing. 
He  surrounds  himself  with  a  body  of  some  sort  or  another. 
He  forms  some  corps  specifically  to  resist  and  reflect  himself, 
to  embody  his  own  animus ,  and  execute  his  own  projects ;  a 
body  of  what  politicians  call  tools,  men  made  to  do  what  is 
wanted  to  be  done,  to  perform  the  hand-and-arm  work  under 
a  leadership,  and  to  represent  and  spread  a  chief’s  presence 
over  the  general  field  of  action.  A  man  like  Cromwell  creates 
an  inner  circle  around  him  first,  through  which  he  hopes  to  con¬ 
trol  the  mass  at  large ;  and  by  the  formation  of  a  nucleus  he 
consolidates  strength  and  prepares  a  position.  Cromwell  did 
this.  He  formed  his  celebrated  corps  of  Ironsides.  The  Iron¬ 
sides  adhered  to  him  like  armour ;  they  were  animate  weapons 
in  his  hand  :  they  combined  the  two  characters  of  a  party 
nucleus  and  a  military  corps. 

Of  the  way  in  which  this  corps  was  formed,  and  the 
principle  kept  in  view  by  the  founder,  we  hear  as  follows  : 
“  Captain  Cromwell  told  Cousin  Hampden  they  never  would 
get  on  with  a  set  of  poor  tapsters  and  town  apprentice  people 
fighting  against  men  of  honour.  To  cope  with  men  of  honour 
they  must  have  men  of  religion.”  “  Mr.  Hampden  answered 
me  ( loquitur  Cromwell  himself),  it  was  a  good  notion,  if  it 
could  be  executed.”  This  good  notion,  then,  Cromwell  started, 
and  Cromwell  executed.  He  put  himself  under  the  teaching  of 
a  Dutch  officer,  Colonel  Dalbier,  from  whom  he  learned  the 
mechanical  part  of  soldiering,  and  who  became  drill-sergeant 
to  the  Ironsides.  The  ethical  and  the  general  disciplinarian 
part  he  conducted  himself.  “  Cromwell  used  daily  to  look 
after  them,  feed  and  dress  their  horses  ;  and  when  it  was  need¬ 
ful,  to  lie  together  with  them  on  the  ground  :  and  besides, 
taught  them  to  clean  and  keep  their  arms  bright,  and  have 
them  ready  for  service.  He  would  prove  and  try  his  troopers, 
how  they  could  endure  a  sudden  terror  ....  and  such  whose 


254 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell . 


hearts  failed,  he  resolved  to  dismount  them,  and  give  their 
horses  to  more  courageous  riders.  This  he  did  by  stratagem  upon 
the  first  muster  of  his  troop ;  when  having  privily  placed 
twelve  resolute  men  in  ambuscade,  upon  a  signal,  the  said 
ambush,  with  a  trumpet  sounding  a  charge,  galloped  furiously 
to  the  body,  out  of  which  twenty  instantly  fled  out  of  fear  and 
dismay,  and  were  glad  the  forfeiture  was  so  cheap  and  easy ; 
and  had  not  the  confidence  to  request  their  continuance  in  his 
service,  or  scruple  the  rendering  their  horses  to  them  who 
should  fight  the  Lord’s  battle  in  their  stead.”  Cromwell  was 
quite  as  powerful  on  the  spiritual  ground,  moulding  them  into 
a  deep  rigid  iron  religionism,  which  combined  the  spiritual 
strictnesses  of  the  camp  with  the  remorseless  cruelties  of  the 
field.  “Not  a  man  swore  but  he  paid  his  twelve  pence — no 
plundering,  no  drinking,  no  disorder  allowed.”  An  awe  was 
thrown  around  his  own  person  in  the  execution  of  this  work, 
and  something  of  the  prophet  got  attached  to  him.  “All 
Cromwell’s  men,”  says  a  writer  hostile  to  him,  but  who  recog¬ 
nises  the  enthusiastic  element  in  his  character  along  with  the 
other,  “had  either  naturally  the  fanatic  humour,  or  soon  imbibed 
it.  Like  Mahomet,  having  transports  of  fancy,  and  withal  a 
crafty  understanding,  .  .  .  he  made  use  of  the  zeal  and  credulity 
of  these  persons,  teaching  them  that  they  fought  for  God.  This 
made  them  the  bolder,  too  often  the  crueller ;  for  it  was  such 
sort  of  men  as  killed  brave  young  Cavendish  and  many  others, 
after  quarter  given,  in  cold  blood.  Habituated  more  to 
spiritual  pride  than  to  carnal  riot,  having  been  industrious  and 
active  in  their  former  callings  and  professions,  where  natural 
courage  wanted,  zeal  supplied  its  place  :  and  from  the  first 
they  chose  rather  to  die  than  fly ;  and  custom  removed  fear 
of  danger.”  Cromwell’s  soldiers  have  the  testimony  of  all 
parties  to  their  religious  strictness  in  a  certain  line,  their  im¬ 
moveable  intrepidity,  their  iron  ferocity,  and  their  love  of  gain. 

Such  were  Cromwell’s  Ironsides.  They  were  his  body¬ 
guard,  his  club-bearers,  his  satellites.  They  were  ramifications 
of  himself.  By  them  he  got  possession  of  the  army,  and 
became  military  centre  and  head.  By  them  he  won  his  battles, 
by  them  he  extended  his  connections.  They  were  his  engines, 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


255 


and  they  were  his  disciples.  “  Truly/’  he  says,  “  they  were 
never  beaten  at  all:”  they  won  him  Marston  Moor  and  Naseby : 
they  took  Bristol  and  Winchester.  By  the  end  of  two  years 
from  the  commencement  of  the  Rebellion  the  war  had  gathered 
about  Cromwell ;  and  he  was  the  great  soldier  of  the  day — 
the  man  to  whom  the  Parliamentary  cause  was  certainly  most 
indebted,  and  on  whom  its  future  success  seemed  most  pro¬ 
bably  to  depend.  He  had  mastered  its  great  difficulty,  and 
provided  an  antagonist  to  the  Cavalier. 

The  nominally  supreme  power  in  the  nation  meantime  did 
nothing,  and  could  do  nothing.  It  could  only  debate,  and 
could  not  fight.  And  to  Cromwell’s  portentously  effective 
soldiery,  and  mass  of  intensified  and  extreme  Puritanism,  to  his 
vigorous  and  fresh  “  Army  Independency,”  which  was  working 
and  fighting,  was  contrasted  a  formal,  stiff,  and  moderate 
Presbyterian  Parliament  of  talkers. 

Cromwell  was  not  a  man  to  let  this  fact  go  on  unattended 
to  ;  to  have  power,  and  not  let  it  be  felt,  to  do  things  and  get 
nothing  for  them,  and  allow  his  army  leadership  to  run  to  waste. 
Parliament  was  given  to  understand  most  significantly,  011 
every  fitting  occasion,  who  it  was  that  was  doing  them  service, 
and  to  whom  they  were  indebted.  After  every  victory  on  the 
field,  after  every  capture  of  important  city  or  garrison,  the  de¬ 
spatch  of  the  general  called  their  attention  to  that  poor  and 
insignificant  part  of  the  matter.  The  Lord’s  hand  had  indeed 
done  it  all :  there  was  no  praise  due  to  man  :  indeed  the 
agency  of  man  had  been  manifestly  all  but  superseded. 
Still  as  the  thing  had  been  done,  and  as  the  field  had  been  won, 
it  seemed  on  the  whole  his  duty  to  call  attention  to  that  poor 
instrumentality  by  which  the  effect  had  been  produced ;  and 
the  jealous  and  suspicious  Presbyterian  assembly  had  the 
formidable  army  Independency  gradually  introduced  to  them. 
The  details  of  the  engagement  are  given  in  a  dry,  matter-of-fact 
way,  and  then  the  note  is  struck  :  “  Honest  men  served  you 
faithfully  in  this  action.  Sir,  they  are  trusty ;  I  beseech  you 
in  the  name  of  God  not  to  discourage  them.”  “  It  may  be 
thought,”  he  says,  after  the  storming  of  Bristol,  “  it  may  be 
thought  that  some  praises  are  due  to  those  gallant  men,  of 


256 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


whose  valour  so  much  mention  is  made  ;  their  humble  suit  to 
you,  and  all  that  have  an  interest  in  this  blessing,  is  that  in 
the  remembrance  of  God’s  praises  they  be  forgotten.”  The 
same  fact  is  sometimes  impressed  upon  them  in  the  form  of  a 
religious  lecture  at  the  end  of  the  despatch,  given  in  the  per¬ 
fectly  self-possessed,  though  most  humbly  worded,  tone  of 
calm  dictatorship,  which  the  victory  gave  him  a  right  to  assume. 
A  victorious  general  was  in  a  position  to  lecture  :  that  position 
was  duly  inflicted  on  the  honourable  Speaker  Lenthall  and  the 
Parliament.  “  Surely,  Sir  [after  one  of  his  battles],  this  is  no¬ 
thing  but  the  hand  of  God  ;  and  whenever  anything  in  the  world 
is  exalted,  or  exalts  itself,  God  will  pull  it  down.  It  is  not  fit 
for  me  to  give  advice,  nor  to  say  what  use  you  should  make  of 
this,  more  than  to  pray  you,  and  all  that  acknowledge  God, 
that  they  would  exalt  Him,  and  not  hate  His  people,  who  are 
the  apple  of  His  eye  ;  ” — especially  not  hate  Cromwell’s  Inde¬ 
pendents,  whom  a  Presbyterian  Parliament  eyed  not  amicably. 
The  lecture  then  enters  into  the  general  duties  of  Parliament, 
and  he  hopes  they  will  be  a  righteous  discreet  assembly,  and 
behave  themselves  well.  After  all  his  successes,  under  one 
form  or  another,  with  much  observance  and  humility  he  inflicted 
very  pointedly  upon  Parliament  the  fact  of  the  person  who  had 
achieved  them.  Bear  in  mind  this  extraordinary  victory,  and 
also  remember  who  have  won  it,  is  the  one  note  he  strikes  : 
“  Honest  men  have  served  you  faithfully  in  this  matter  ”  ! 
remember  that :  remember  me  and  my  Ironsides. 

The  special  and  marked  reference  of  every  success  to  the 
Divine  agency,  the  large,  powerful,  muddy  stream  of  super¬ 
naturalism  which  runs  through  all  his  speeches  and  despatches, 
did  not  much  tend  to  interfere  with  this  result.  “  The  Lord  is 
wonderful  in  these  things ;  wonderful,  wonderful,”  he  repeats. 
“  The  gloriousness  of  God’s  work,”  “  God’s  strange  work,”  and 
the  “  seals  of  God’s  approbation,”  “  His  marvellous  salvation 
wrought  at  Worcester  what  God  wrought  at  one  place  and 
the  other — all  this  Parliament  must  see  and  must  acknow¬ 
ledge.  “  Glory  to  God  alone ;  as  for  instruments,  they  were 
very  inconsiderable  throughout.”  With  the  “  mercies,”  the 
“dispensations,”  the  “deliverances,”  the  “births  of  Provi- 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell 


257 


clence,”  which  his  victories  always  were,  Cromwell  and  his 
Ironsides  had  comparatively  little  to  do ;  “  indeed,  your  instru¬ 
ments  (addressing  the  Honourable  House)  are  poor  and  weak, 
and  can  do  nothing  hut  through  believing.”  Such  was  Crom¬ 
well’s  explanation  of  his  successes.  The  fact,  however,  of  a 
series  of  events  being  exceedingly  wonderful,  marvellous, 
mysterious,  grand,  providential,  and  supernatural,  does  not 
exactly  tend  to  destroy  the  importance  of  the  chief  mover  in 
them  and  external  author  of  them.  The  “  poor  instrument  ” 
had  something  reflected  upon  it,  and  Speaker  Lenthall  and 
the  Honourable  House  would  not  entirely  separate  the  agent 
from  the  work.  The  visible  producer  of  effects,  the  excessive 
greatness  of  which  was  the  very  cause  of  his  referring  them, 
in  so  marked  a  way,  to  a  higher  source  than  himself,  was, 
undoubtedly,  somebody  that  Parliament  would  do  well  to 
respect.  For  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  Cromwell  gives  his 
reasons  why  he  thinks  a  success  so  supernatural  and  so  little 
referable  to  himself;  and  the  reason  is  that  he  achieved  it 
against  such  overwhelming  difficulties,  and  manifested  such 
immeasurable  superiority  by  obtaining  it.  “  Only  give  me 
leave  to  add  one  word,  showing  the  disparity  of  forces  on  both 
sides,  that  so  you  may  see,  and  all  the  world  acknowledge,  the 
great  hand  of  God  in  this  business.  The  Scots  army  could  not 
be  less  than  twelve  thousand  effective  foot,  well  armed,  and 
five  thousand  horse  ;  Langdale  not  less  than  two  thousand  five 
hundred  foot  and  fifteen  hundred  horse,  in  all  twenty- one 
thousand ;  and  truly  very  few  of  their  foot  but  were  as  well 
armed,  if  not  better,  than  yours,  and  at  divers  disputes  did 
fight  two  or  three  hours  before  they  would  quit  their  ground. 
Yours  were  about  two  thousand  five  hundred  horse  and  dragoons 
of  your  old  army,  about  four  thousand  foot  of  your  old  army, 
also  about  sixteen  hundred  Lancashire  foot  and  about  five 
hundred  Lancashire  horse  ;  in  all,  about  eight  thousand  six 
hundred.  .  .  .  Surely,  sir,  this  is  nothing  but  the  hand  of  God.” 

These,  and  a  whole  class  of  similar  expressions,  were,  indeed, 
the  genuine  produce  of  a  particular  part  of  Cromwell’s  mind. 
Cromwell  had  a  great  mastery  over  the  feelings  of  humility. 
He  not  only  adopted  its  language,  but  threw  himself  into  its 

M.E.-I.]  e 


253 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


sensations.  He  carried  about  with  him  a  large  protective 
machinery  of  sentiment,  under  which  his  strength  acted  with 
greater  freedom  and  security ;  and  he  opposed  a  seven-fold 
shield  of  spiritual  modesty  to  a  jealous  and  ostracising  public  eye. 

The  humility  of  great  men  is  a  not  unfrequent  phenomenon 
in  the  world  of  character,  making,  like  other  phenomena,  prior 
to  inspection  and  analysis,  a  legitimate  impression  upon  the 
eye.  Upon  a  nearer  view,  however,  it  discloses  heterogeneous 
features,  and  shows  a  safe  and  unsafe  side.  It  is  seen  attached 
to  a  class  of  minds  who  do  not  appear  to  have  a  strict  right  to 
it,  as  well  as  to  those  who  do  ;  and  the  view  of  the  man’s 
whole  character  sometimes  ratifies  the  antecedent  appearance, 
and  sometimes  undoes  it.  A  distinction  appears,  which  is 
applicable,  perhaps,  to  the  case  of  other  virtues  as  well. 
There  appears  to  be  in  some  minds  what  we  may  term  the 
talent  of  humility,  as  distinguished  from  the  virtue.  The 
talent  of  humility  does  much  more  than  simply  use  expres¬ 
sions,  and  put  on  an  outside  ;  it  assumes  the  real  feeling,  so 
far  as  it  can  be  assumed,  without  being  intrinsic  ;  it  creates 
its  sensations,  and  throws  itself  into  its  spirit.  The  distinction 
between  the  superinduced  and  the  moral  and  genuine  feeling 
is,  indeed,  most  subtle  often,  and  difficult  of  detection.  The 
one  seems  to  be  able  to  do  all  that  the  other  can.  It  is  felt  at 
the  proper  times,  and  it  comes  out  with  natural  ease,  exuber¬ 
ance,  and  pliancy.  A  general  consciousness  inhabits  the  mind 
of  the  claims  of  humility ;  the  sentiment  is  kept  in  view,  a 
vicinity  to  it  is  maintained,  and  the  will,  by  an  easy  process,  is 
always  ready  to  slide  into  the  feeling  when  a  situation  suggests. 
A  taste,  a  perception  of  propriety,  a  sense  of  what  is  expected 
by  others,  in  some  cases  ;  a  deeper  and  more  fanatical  faculty 
in  others  ;  the  subjective  species  of  humility  most  intimately 
mingles  and  intertwines  itself  with  the  whole  mind  of  the 
person  who  possesses  and  uses  it.  It  is  this  internal  character 
of  the  faculty  which  gives  it  its  power,  promptness,  facility, 
and  influence  upon  others.  A  mere  case  of  words  would 
neither  satisfy  those  to  whom  it  appealed  nor  the  person  him¬ 
self  ;  and  feeling  and  reality  of  a  sort  must  be  had,  even  if  they 
must  be  made  first.  This  is  the  talent  of  humility.  It  aided 


259 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 

Luther  not  a  little  ;  while,  mingling  with  the  movements  of 
that  determined  will  which  was  casting  off  the  whole  Church 
as  a  rotten  outside,  it  made  him  think  himself  “  a  poor,  miser¬ 
able,  contemptible  brother,  more  like  a  corpse  than  a  man 
look  up  to  the  cardinals  “  as  the  mouthpieces  of  the  Holy 
Ghost ;”  and  “  expect  the  breathings  of  the  Spirit  from  the 
bishops,  theologians,  canonists,  and  monks  of  Borne.”  It 
seems  to  be  almost  true  that  a  very  strong  aspirant  self-will 
creates  a  humility  in  the  very  process  of  self-exaltation ;  the 
comparison  of  what  it  wants  to  be  with  what  it  is  suggests  the 
idea  of  inferiority ;  it  feels  weak  from  the  intensity  of  its 
desire  to  be  strong ;  it  is  humble,  sentimental,  and  infantine, 
by  the  force  of  antagonism  ;  it  thinks  itself  humility,  as  haste 
thinks  itself  delay,  and  avarice  thinks  itself  prodigality. 

Cromwell  exhibits  this  talent  in  a  remarkable  and  highly- 
developed  form.  He  luxuriates  in  it ;  he  wields  it  with  an 
almost  wanton  freedom  and  licentious  boldness  ;  he  throws 
himself  with  warmth  into  all  the  sensations  which  belong  to 
poor,  humiliated,  persecuted,  despised  man.  His  humility  rises 
with  his  determination.  At  the  time  that  he  was  literally 
riding  roughshod,  with  his  Ironsides,  over  the  country,  and 
pushing  it,  by  main  force  and  simple  steel,  into  extremities 
from  which  it  shrunk,  he  and  his  followers  were  “  the  poor, 
despised,  jeered  saints  ;  poor  weak  saints,  yet  saints ;  if  not 
sheep,  yet  lambs.”  “  Oh,  His  mercy,”  he  says,  “  to  the  whole 
society  of  saints;  let  them  mock  on  !”  They  were  “  the  poor 
people  of  God,”  “  poor  despised  things,”  “  poor  instruments,” 
"  weak  hands.”  He  himself  was,  in  his  strongest  da}xs,  but  a 
“  poor  looker-on,”  a  “  poor  unworthy  creature,”  a  “  servant  to 
you.”  He  “  did  not  grasp  at  power and  he  “  would  rather 
have  kept  a  flock  of  sheep  than  held  the  Protectorate.”  Such 
were  Cromwell  and  his  Ironsides,  according  to  his  own  account. 
The  proud  world  was  trampling,  in  its  strength,  upon  these 
innocent  and  helpless  babes — as  grim,  fierce,  and  deadly  men 
of  steel  as  ever  won  a  political  cause  or  raised  a  victorious 
general  to  power. 

To  proceed  :  With  his  solid  nucleus  of  military  independ¬ 
ency,  and  staff  of  iron,  able,  enthusiastic  officers  formed  around 


26o 


Carlyles  Cromwell 

him,  Cromwell  from  this  time  forward  moulded  the  Great 
Rebellion.  He  created,  as  he  went  along,  the  ground  that  he 
wanted.  He  had  to  make  it,  and  he  did  make  it.  The  power 
of  Cromwell’s  mind  is  in  nothing  more  clearly  seen  than  in  the 
imperious,  determined,  and  successfully  audacious  strength  of 
mere  will,  by  which  he  pushed  the  nation  on  to  a  greater 
rebellion  than  it  ever  intended,  and  made  it  proceed  when  it 
wished  to  stop.  If  any  fact  is  clear  in  the  history  of  these 
times  it  is  this,  that  the  nation  as  a  whole  was  getting  tired  of 
rebelling  now ;  that  the  disaffected  spirit,  having  never  really 
penetrated  it,  was,  after  two  or  three  years  of  disorder  and 
bloodshed,  receding ;  and  that  the  country  at  large  was  think¬ 
ing  of  peace  again,  and  would  have  been  willing  to  make  a 
compromise.  The  strong  inert  love  of  order,  and  old  estab¬ 
lished  order — as  the  more  sure  sort,  was  thick-spread  over  the 
nation  as  such;  it  had  no  desire  for  “heroic  Puritanism;”  it 
wanted  rest,  and  the  mass  even  of  the  very  party  which  had 
brought  on  the  rebellion  retained  conservative  feelings,  and 
even,  in  spite  of  themselves,  a  respect  for  the  old  family.  The 
nation  had  had  more  than  it  bargained  for,  and  now  wanted  to 
go  on  much  in  its  old  way.  But  Cromwell  would  not  let  it. 
He  pointed  his  sword,  and  blocked  up  the  avenue  of  retreat. 
He  had  to  force  it,  and  he  did  force  it  into  consistency ;  his 
long  file  of  soldiery  moved  at  its  heels,  not  letting  it  turn 
back ;  and  he  made  the  country,  in  spite  of  itself,  follow  out 
its  course.  The  inevitable  tendency  of  all  power  to  centralise 
committed  the  nation  to  a  despotism  it  never  reckoned  on. 
The  army  nucleus  absorbed  the  national  power  ;  and  out  of  the 
dark  chamber  of  Cromwell’s  mind  issued  the  train  of  events 
which  completed  the  Great  Rebellion. 

He  had  first  to  deal  with  the  Parliamentary  generals.  The 
Parliamentary  generals  themselves  began  to  show  signs  of  re¬ 
luctance  and  tardiness.  Essex  and  Manchester  were  peers. 
Cromwell  observed  these  signs,  and  kept  his  eye  on  the  peers. 

“In  the  House  of  Commons,  on  Monday,  25th  November 
1644,  Lieutenant-General  Cromwell  did,  as  ordered  on  the 
Saturday  before,  exhibit  a  charge  against  the  Earl  of  Man¬ 
chester,  to  this  effect : — 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


261 


<c  That  the  said  Earl  hath  always  been  indisposed  and 
backward  to  engagements  and  the  ending  of  the  war  by  the 
sword,  and  always  for  such  a  peace  as  a  thorough  victory  would 
be  a  disadvantage  to ;  and  hath  declared  this  by  principles 
express  to  that  purpose,  and  by  a  continued  series  of  carriage 
and  actions  answerable. 

“  That  since  the  taking  of  York,  as  if  the  Parliament  had 
now  advantage  fully  enough,  he  hath  declined  whatsoever 
tended  to  farther  advantage  upon  the  enemy ;  hath  neglected 
and  studiously  shifted  off  opportunities  to  that  purpose,  as  if 
he  thought  the  King  too  low  and  the  Parliament  too  high — 
especially  at  Dennington  Castle.”  Contemporaneously  with 
these  charges,  Lieutenant-General  Cromwell  is  also  reported 
to  have  said,  “  There  never  would  be  good  time  in  England  till 
we,  had  done  with  Lords.”  Essex  and  Manchester  were  ac¬ 
cordingly,  in  Cromwell’s  best  style,  with  compliments  and  good 
pensions,  ousted  out  of  their  places. 

A  graver  difficulty  still  stood  in  his  way.  The  people  had 
not  got  over  their  loyalty.  It  remained  as  an  instinct  in 
them  when  they  thought  they  had  quite  parted  with  it ;  the 
hahit  of  thinking  a  certain  family  to  be  the  royal  one,  the 
natural  occupier  of  the  throne,  was  a  deeply  ingrained  one  in 
the  nation.  Charles  was  personally  a  formidable  possessor  of 
this  prestige.  The  genuine  hereditary  king  was  seen  in  him. 
The  king  by  nature,  a  personage  we  have  heard  much  of  lately, 
had  doubtless  his  own  magnificence ;  but,  unfortunately,  by  the 
side  of  the  king  hereditary  he  looked  awkward  and  grotesque. 
Charles  undoubtedly  stood  in  Cromwell’s  way,  and  the  model 
of  calm  grace,  dignity,  refinement,  lofty  regal  bearing,  had  a 
power,  as  an  image  before  the  national  mind,  which  the  rough 
work  of  rebellion  could  not  efface.  It  arrested  people’s  eyes ; 
they  carried  his  face  about  with  them ;  he  was  a  fact  in  his 
way,  as  Cromwell  was  in  his ;  the  power  of  the  beautiful  met 
that  of  the  strong.  “  Every  inch  a  king,”  says  Mr.  Carlyle  of 
him,  “  .  .  .  he  comports  himself  (at  his  trial)  with  royal  dignity, 
with  royal  haughtiness,  strong  in  his  divine  right,  smiles  con¬ 
temptuously,  looks  with  an  austere  countenance.”  It  is  im¬ 
possible  to  watch  the  policy  and  temper  of  Cromwell’s  whole 


262 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


movements  without  a  very  strong  impression  arising  with 
respect  to  his  state  of  mind  toward  the  unfortunate  Charles. 
There  is  a  deliberate,  deep,  subterranean  resolution  forming. 
Knowing  the  event  beforehand,  we  yet  seem  to  prophesy  it 
afresh  from  the  signs  that  we  encounter  in  our  way,  and  pre¬ 
pare  ourselves  anew  for  the  fatal  close.  There  is  something 
ominous  in  the  way  in  which  he  alludes  to  “  that  person  ”  in 
his  letters.  When  persons  talk  under  their  breath,  as  it  were, 
we  think  something  is  going  to  happen,  and  the  mysterious 
whisper  seems  to  imply  the  fearfulness  of  what  it  does  not 
like  to  pronounce  aloud.  Cromwell  knew  what  Charles  was  ; 
he  knew  he  was  unmanageable  ;  he  saw  underneath  the  passive 
yielding  outside  a  very  fixed  temper  and  mould  of  mind,  which, 
when  it  once  understood  its  ground  and  decided  what  was 
principle  and  to  be  stood  by,  would  not  give  in.  A  lofty 
passive  will  is  an  awkward  antagonist  after  all  to  ever  so 
powerful  an  aggressive  one.  Signs  are  not  wanting  that  Crom¬ 
well  did  Charles  justice,  and  appreciated  him,  intellectually, 
better,  a  good  deal,  than  the  mass  beneath  him.  He  saw  in  him 
a  man  who  never  would  be  his  tool,  and  who  therefore  always 
would  be  his  rival  and  overshadower.  He  and  Charles  could 
not  fulfil  their  two  courses  together.  His  greatness  could  not 
develop  while  “that  person”  was  by.  The  deep  jealousy  of 
a  conscious,  prophetic  mind,  aspiring  to  greatness,  operated. 
“  That  person  ”  stood  in  his  way ;  “  that  person  ”  was  to  be  got 
rid  of.  There  was  no  other  way  of  reaching  his  destination. 
But  he  saw  the  nation’s  reluctance.  He  saw  that,  by  a  tacit 
reverence,  people  persisted  in  putting  the  King  in  the  back¬ 
ground,  reluctant  to  confront  the  fact  that  they  were  fighting 
against  him ;  and  he  would  not  tolerate  rebellion’s  weaknesses 
and  reserves.  He  took  the  child  up  to  the  crowned  image, 
and  made  him  strike  it ;  he  accustomed  people  to  the  idea  of 
royal  bloodshed,  he  made  bold  speeches  in  that  direction. 
“  The  appalling  report  circulates  ”  (as  he  doubtless  meant  it  to 
do)  of  his  saying,  “  that  if  he  met  the  King  in  battle  he  would 
fire  his  pistol  at  the  King  as  at  another.”  He  screwed  the 
nation  violently  up  to  the  mark,  and  forced  audacity  upon  it. 

The  army  nucleus  was  thus  all-powerful,  and  the  camp 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell .  263 

dragged  the  country  along.  But  the  army  was  only  one  field 
in  which  Cromwell  acted.  While  he  had  one  foot  there,  he 
had  another  in  Parliament;  and  an  instinctive  prescience  seemed 
to  make  him  keep  in  view,  in  the  very  thick  of  the  military 
life,  those  Parliamentary  relations  which  a  future  stage  of  his 
course  would  require.  There  is  a  great  difference  on  this  head 
between  two  classes  of  statesmen.  One  goes  off  ably,  vigor¬ 
ously,  effectually  on  one  tack ;  it  allies  itself  with  one  party, 
and  brings  out  and  avails  itself  thoroughly  of  that  one  party’s 
resources.  This  is  what  a  great  party  statesman  does.  A 
statesman  of  another  type  does  not  thus  localise  himself,  but 
plants  his  influence  in  different  and  even  opposing  quarters, 
lives  in  two  or  more  political  spheres  at  once,  and  aims  at  in¬ 
clusiveness  and  ubiquity.  Had  Cromwell  committed  himself 
wholly  to  a  military  swing,  and  assumed  the  open  attitude  of 
a  conqueror,  his  army  would  doubtless  have  borne  him  along, 
and  he  might  have  ridden  over  Parliament  and  country  much 
sooner  perhaps  than  he  did ;  but  his  ground  would  have  been 
narrower.  This  was  not  what  he  wanted.  He  wanted,  on  the 
contrary,  width  and  extent  of  position.  He  was  bent  on  en¬ 
larging,  on  including,  on  getting  hold  of  all  sides,  on  grasping 
all  the  political  ground  there  was  in  the  nation.  He  did  not 
want  to  belong  to  the  army  only,  or  to  Parliament  only,  but 
from  a  deeper  position  than  that  of  either,  to  manage  both.  He 
kept  aloof  from,  he  attached  himself  to,  both  as  he  pleased  ;  he 
allowed  neither  one  nor  the  other  to  carry  him  away  or  appro¬ 
priate  his  name ;  he  would  have  the  resources  of  both,  and  be 
dependent  on  neither,  and  from  a  subtle  middle  ground,  which 
none  but  himself  could  maintain,  he  would  play  off  one  against 
the  other,  and  enjoy  the  strength  of  each  one’s  confidence  in 
him,  and  jealousy  of  the  other. 

Cromwell,  throughout  these  military  successes,  was  in  Par¬ 
liament  quite  the  “  member  of  Parliament,”  uttering  proper, 
constitutional  dicta,  and  taking  the  part  that  a  Parliamentary 
position  would  require.  He  stood  there  as  the  civilian,  not  the 
soldier,  and  the  natural  jealousy  which  the  civil  body  contracts 
towards  the  military  in  a  revolutionary  struggle  was  disarmed 
by  the  moderate  and  humble  tone  of  the  representative  for 


264 


Carlyles  Cromwell. 


Cambridge.  With  that  peculiar  instinct,  more  powerful  than 
deliberate  purpose,  which  leads  statesmen  of  his  mould,  when 
occasion  requires,  invariably  to  make  their  language  the  exact 
cloak  to  the  fact,  he  informed  the  collection  of  lawyers,  bur¬ 
gesses,  and  country  squires  in  that  assembly,  that  an  army 
blindly  devoted  to  them  hardly  cast  an  eye  upon  their  general. 
“  I  can  speak  this  for  my  own  soldiers,  that  they  look  not  upon 
me,  but  upon  you,  and  for  you  they  will  fight  and  live  and  die 
in  your  cause.  They  do  not  idolise  me,  but  look  upon  the 
cause  they  fight  for.  You  may  lay  upon  them  what  commands 
you  please,  they  will  obey  your  commands  in  that  cause  they 
fight  for.”  Here,  dropping  the  manners  of  the  camp,  he  could 
quietly  submit  to  the  “  high  carriages  ”  of  Holies  and  his  set, 
content  with  whispering  unheard  into  his  friend  Ludlow’s  ear, 
who  sat  by  him,  “  These  men  will  never  leave  till  the  army  pull 
them  out  by  the  ears  !”  He  saw  in  the  English  public  mind  a 
stiff  constitutional  element,  that  required  very  skilful  dragoon¬ 
ing,  if  it  was  to  be  dragooned  successfully,  and  he  took  care  to 
meet  it.  He  went  along  with  and  sympathised  with  Parlia¬ 
ment.  He  made  his  Parliamentary  basis  go  on  side  by  side 
with  his  military  one,  and  formed  just  that  modification  of  the 
soldier  which  was  calculated  to  calm  apprehensions,  and  to 
have  weight  with  the  mass. 

The  consequence  was,  that  as  the  jealousies  between  the 
Parliament  and  army  rose  up,  each  side  appealed  to  him  as  its 
especial  friend,  and  the  Parliamentary  Cromwell  was  arbitrating 
on  the  very  dissatisfactions  in  the  army  which  the  military 
Cromwell  had  been  fostering.  For  example,  he  goes  down  as 
Commissioner  from  the  Commons  to  examine  the  declaration 
of  grievances  issued  by  the  army  at  Saffron  Walden,  in  1647. 
On  his  return,  “  Lieutenant-General  Cromwell  receives  the 
thanks  of  the  House.”  Strange  to  say,  however,  in  spite  of  the 
mediatorial  labours  of  the  Commissioner,  the  cry  in  the  army 
grows  stronger  and  fiercer :  the  offer  of  eight  weeks’  pay  is 
disdained,  and  the  army  wants  eight  times  as  much.  The 
Parliamentary  Commissioner  now  appears  in  his  other  character. 
In  the  course  of  a  few  days  the  army  was  seen  moving  on  with 
solemn  steps  to  St.  Albans,  and  getting  alarmingly  near  London. 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


265 


A  letter  appeared  addressed  to  the  Right  Honourable  the  Lord 
Mayor,  Aldermen,  and  Common  Council  of  the  City  of  London, 
a  body  to  whom  it  was  convenient  to  address  a  document  which 
could  not  respectfully  have  been  sent  to  the  House.  This 
letter  came  from  the  army,  and  bore  Cromwell’s  name  among 
others  appended  to  it.  It  was  read  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
It  asserted  the  moderation  and  sobriety  of  the  party  from  whom 
it  came  ;  the  constitutional  temper  of  the  army ;  their  earnest 
wish  to  let  everybody  alone ;  and  their  simple-minded  desire 
for  necessary  justice.  It  concluded,  “  And  although  you  may 
suppose  that  a  rich  city  may  seem  an  enticing  bait  to  poor 
hungry  soldiers  to  venture  for  to  gain  the  wealth  thereof, — yet, 
if  not  provoked  by  you,  we  do  profess,  rather  than  any  such 
evil  should  fall  out,  the  soldiers  shall  make  their  way  through 
our  blood  to  effect  it.”  Thus  mild  and  loving,  “if  not  provoked,” 
the  generals  allowed  the  letter  proper  time  to  sink  into  the 
House ;  and  another  step  followed.  The  army  at  St. 
Albans  accused  of  treason  eleven  members  of  the  House  of 
Commons  by  name.  The  members  were  those  whose  “high 
carriages”  had  attracted  Cromwell’s  attention,  and  had  been  the 
subject  of  that  gentle  whisper  to  Ludlow  ;  viz.  Holies  and  his 
set.  The  eleven  in  consequence  asked  the  leave  of  the  House 
to  retire  for  six  months  from  their  Parliamentary  duties.  It 
was  given  them  ;  and  they  retired,  some  fortunate  ones  to 
France,  and  elsewhere  ;  some  unfortunate  ones  to  the  Tower. 

From  this  subtle  middle  ground  Cromwell  worked  upon  the 
different  parties  in  the  country.  He  had  all  shades  of  opinion, 
all  mixtures  of  feeling,  to  meet :  he  had  to  confirm  political 
irresolution,  to  deal  tenderly  with  old  prejudices,  to  modify, 
to  put  aspects  on  things  ;  to  persuade,  to  manage.  The 
respectable  constitutionalist,  who  merely  wanted  a  check  to 
arbitrary  power,  did  not  like  revolution,  and  was  ready  to  meet 
the  King  half  way,  the  Presbyterian  aristocrat  who  dreaded 
mob  and  army  law,  the  man  of  tender  heart  who  pitied  the 
King,  the  man  of  scrupulous  conscience  who  shrunk  from  ex¬ 
tremities,  had  all  to  be  met,  argued  with,  agreed  with,  sym¬ 
pathised  with,  had  all  to  be  treated  tenderly,  cautiously,  and 
shrewdly.  He  had  to  show  that  he  understood  them,  and  re- 


266 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


spected  their  opinions  and  scruples  ;  to  prove  by  liis  sympathy 
his  right  to  advise,  and  then  gently  to  turn,  persuade,  mollify, 
and  impress.  If  persons  continued  obstinate  in  spite  of  all  this 
trouble,  he  took  care  they  were  removed  from  place,  and  more 
manageable  ones  put  in. 

Colonel  Robert  Hammond,  nephew  of  the  great  divine,  was 
the  King  s  keeper  in  the  Isle  of  Wight.  He  was  a  man  who 
felt  scruples,  and  did  not  at  all  like  the  aspect  of  things.  It 
was  the  month  of  November  1648,  and  a  crisis  was  coming  on. 
He  felt  the  guardianship  of  the  King  “  a  sad  and  heavy 
burden,”  and  could  not  be  quite  easy  as  to  the  fate  for  which 
he  was  keeping  his  prisoner.  He  did  not  like  the  army  nucleus 
at  all.  He  saw  the  country  at  large  peaceably  and  constitu¬ 
tionally  disposed,  and  simply  dragged  along  by  this  knot ;  he 
began  to  talk  of  the  right  of  the  “  majority,”  and  the  unlawful¬ 
ness  of  a  smaller  number  forcing  a  larger  into  a  policy  odious 
to  it.  Made  melancholy  by  such  speculations,  he  receives  a 
letter  from  Cromwell: — “Dear  Robin,  our  fleshly  reasonings 
ensnare  us.  These  make  us  say,  ‘  heavy/  c  sad/  c  pleasant/ 
f  easy.’  Was  there  not  a  little  of  this  when  Robert  Hammond, 
through  dissatisfaction  too,  desired  retirement  from  the  army, 
and  thought  of  quiet  in  the  Isle  of  Wight  ?  Did  not  God  find 
him  out  there  ?  I  believe  he  will  never  forget  this.  And  now 
I  perceive  he  is  to  seek  again  ;  partly  through  his  sad  and  heavy 
burden,  and  partly  through  his  dissatisfaction  with  friends’ 
actings.  .  .  .  Dear  Robin,  thou  and  I  were  never  worthy  to  be 
door-keepers  in  this  service.  If  thou  wilt  seek,  seek  to  know 
the  mind  of  God  in  all  that  chain  of  Providence,  whereby  God 
brought  thee  thither,  and  that  Person  to  thee  ;  how,  before  and 
since,  God  has  ordered  him,  and  affairs  concerning  him;  and 
then  tell  me,  Whether  there  be  not  some  glorious  and  high  mean¬ 
ing  in  all  this,  above  what  thou  hast  yet  attained  ?  And,  laying- 
aside  thy  fleshly  reason,  seek  of  the  Lord  to  teach  thee  what 
that  is ;  and  He  will  do  it.” 

He  then  meets  Hammond’s  difficulties — “  You  say  :  ‘  God 
hath  appointed  authorities  among  the  nations,  to  which  active 
or  passive  obedience  is  to  be  yielded.  This  resides  in  England 
in  the  Parliament.’  To  this  I  shall  say  nothing,  though  I 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


267 


could  say  very  much ;  but  only  desire  thee  to  see  what  thou 
hndest  in  thy  own  heart  to  two  or  three  plain  considerations  : 
First ,  Whether  Salus  Populi  he  a  sound  position  ?  Secondly, 
Whether  in  the  way  in  hand,  really  and  before  the  Lord,  before 
whom  conscience  has  to  stand,  this  be  provided  for  ; — or  if 
the  whole  fruit  of  the  war  is  not  like  to  be  frustrated,  and  all 
most  like  to  turn  to  what  it  was,  and  worse  ?  Thirdly,  Whether 
this  army  be  not  a  lawful  Power,  called  by  God  to  oppose  and 
fight  against  the  King  upon  some  stated  grounds ;  and  being  in 
power  to  such  ends,  may  not  oppose  one  Name  of  Authority,  for 
those  ends,  as  well  as  another  Name, — since  it  was  not  the 
outward  Authority  summoning  them  by  its  power  made  the 
quarrel  lawful,  but  the  quarrel  was  lawful  in  itself?  If  so,  it 
may  be,  acting  will  be  justified  in  foro  humano.  But  truly 
this  kind  of  reasonings  may  be  but  fleshly,  either  with  or 
against :  only  it  is  good  to  try  what  truth  may  be  in  them. 
And  the  Lord  teach  us.  .  .  After  meeting  Hammond’s  actual 
“  difficulties,”  he  undermines  the  whole  structure  by  a  deeper 
argument  still :  After  all,  he  asks,  are  difficulties  a  difficulty, 
and  not  rather  a  simple  stimulus  to  our  faith  ?  “  If  the  Lord 

have  in  any  measure  persuaded  His  people,  as  generally  He  hath, 
of  the  lawfulness,  nay  of  the  duty, — this  persuasion  prevailing 
upon  the  heart  is  faith  ;  and  acting  thereupon  is  acting  in  faith  ; 
and  the  more  the  difficulties  are,  the  more  the  faith.” 

He  then  tries  to  engage  Hammond’s  principle  of  resigna¬ 
tion,  and  sympathy  with  the  oppressed,  on  the  side  for  which 
he  argues  : — 

“My  dear  friend,  let  us  look  into  providences  ;  surely  they 
mean  somewhat.  They  hang  so  together;  have  been  so  con¬ 
stant,  so  clear,  unclouded.  Malice,  swoln  malice,  against  God’s 
people,  now  called  ‘  Saints,’  to  root  out  their  name  ; — and  yet 
they,  ‘  these  poor  Saints,’  getting  arms,  and  therein  blessed 
with  defence  and  more  !  I  desire,  he  that  is  for  a  principle  of 
suffering  would  not  too  much  slight  this.”  He  concludes, 
“  Bobin,  I  have  done.  Ask  we  our  hearts,  whether  we  think 
that,  after  all,  these  dispensations,  the  like  to  which  many 
generations  cannot  afford,  should  end  in  so  corrupt  reasonings 
of  good  men ;  and  should  so  hit  the  designings  of  bad  ? 


268 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


Thinkest  thou  in  thy  heart  that  the  glorious  dispensations  of 
God  point  out  to  this  ?  Or  to  teach  His  people  to  trust  in 
Him,  and  to  wait  for  better  things, — when,  it  may  be,  better 
are  sealed  to  many  of  their  spirits  ?  And  I,  as  a  poor  looker-on, 
I  had  rather  live  in  the  hope  of  that  spirit  ‘  which  believes  that 
God  doth  so  teach  us,’  and  take  my  share  with  them ,  expecting 
a  good  issue,  than  be  led  away  with  the  others.  This  trouble 
I  have  been  at,  because  my  soul  loves  thee,  and  I  would  not 
have  thee  swerve,  or  lose  any  glorious  opportunity  the  Lord 
puts  into  thy  hand.  The  Lord  be  thy  counsellor.  Dear  Eobin, 
I  rest  thine.  Oliver  Cromwell.” 

It  is  worth  observing  that  “  Dear  Eobin  ”  received  this  letter 
as  the  ex-Governor  of  the  Isle  of  Wight.  “  Colonel  Hammond,” 
we  quote  from  Mr.  Carlyle,  “  the  ingenuous  young  man  whom 
Oliver  much  loves,  did  not  receive  this  letter  at  the  Isle  of 
Wight,  whither  it  was  directed  ;  young  Colonel  Hammond  is 
no  longer  there.  On  Monday  the  27th  there  came  to  him 
Colonel  Ewer,  he  of  the  Eemonstrance ;  Colonel  Ewer  with 
new  force,  with  an  Order  from  the  Lord  General  and  Army 
Council  that  Colonel  Hammond  do  straightway  repair  to 
Windsor,  being  wanted  at  headquarters  there.  A  young 
Colonel,  with  dubitations  such  as  those  of  Hammond’s,  will  not 
suit  in  that  Isle  at  present.” 

We  have  quoted  this  letter  as  a  specimen  of  Cromwell’s 
mode  of  arguing.  To  comment  upon  the  argument  itself,  and 
assert  that  his  mode  of  treating  difficulties  of  conscience  as  if 
they  were  simply  to  be  got  over  and  resisted,  goes  far  to  destroy 
all  morality,  would  be  out  of  our  line.  The  mode  of  arguing 
is  what  we  remark  on.  Its  cautious  obscurity,  shadowy  sig¬ 
nificance  ;  its  suavity,  tenderness,  subtlety,  the  way  in  which 
he  alludes  to  more  than  he  mentions,  suggests  more  than  pro¬ 
nounces,  disclaims  his  own  argumentative  intention,  and  opens 
an  indefinite  view,  all  the  hard  features  of  which  he  softly  puts 
aside,  are  highly  characteristic.  Cromwell  argues,  and  he  does 
not  argue  ;  he  is  not  hurt,  if  he  is  disagreed  with,  for  he  did 
not  assert,  he  only  proposed  a  question.  He  is  invulnerable  ; 
he  has  said  nothing ;  he  has  only  raised  an  hypothetical  cloud. 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell ’ 


269 


He  lias  only  offered  reasonings  “  which  it  is  good  to  try.”  The 
rest  of  the  letter  is  religious.  “  My  dear  friend,  let  us  look  to 
providences/'  “  Hear  Robin,  beware  of  men.”  “  Call  not  your 
burden  sad  and  heavy,  dear  Robin,  if  your  Father  laid  it  upon 
you.  He  intended  neither.”  “  The  Lord  teach  us.”  “  Look 
to  the  Lord.”  The  least  hint  at  a  definite  argument  forthwith 
evaporates  in  a  mist  of  spiritual  generality.  He  avoids  every¬ 
thing  that  will  startle :  he  raises  no  image  :  he  unsettles,  sets 
afloat,  he  does  not  clutch  his  correspondent. 

A  short  military  note,  written  in  his  character  as  command¬ 
ing  officer  to  a  man  whom  he  suspected,  shows  off  his  hinting 
style  in  its  stern  and  rough  aspect : — 

“  Mr.  Barnard, — It’s  most  true  my  Lieutenant,  with  some 
other  soldiers  of  my  troop  were  at  your  House.  I  dealt  so 
freely  as  to  inquire  after  you ;  the  reason  was,  I  had  heard  you 
reported  active  against  the  proceedings  of  Parliament,  and  for 
those  that  disturb  the  peace  of  this  Country  and  the  Kingdom, 
— with  those  of  this  Country  who  have  had  meetings  not  a  few, 
to  intents  and  purposes  too  too  full  of  suspect. 

“  It's  true,  Sir,  I  know  you  have  been  wary  in  your  car¬ 
riages  :  be  not  too  confident  thereof.  Subtility  may  deceive  you  ; 
integrity  never  will.  With  my  heart  I  shall  desire  that  your 
judgment  may  alter,  and  your  practice.  I  come  only  to  hinder 
men  from  increasing  the  rent, — from  doing  hurt ;  but  not  to 
hurt  any  man ;  nor  shall  I  you ;  I  hope  you  will  give  me  no 
cause.  If  you  do,  I  must  be  pardoned  what  my  relation  to  the 
public  calls  for.” 

The  peculiar  kind  Of  shrewdness  we  see  in  this  note  runs 
through  a  great  part  of  Cromwell's  diplomatic  correspondence. 
We  might  give  many  such  specimens.  The  revolutionary  dragon 
in  the  centre  perforated  with  his  eye  the  whole  scene  of  confu¬ 
sion.  There  was  a  watch  kept  over  events ;  men  were  every¬ 
where  seen  into,  seen  through.  A  commanding  subtlety  un¬ 
earthed  the  inferior  or  more  simple  subtlety  of  all  other  minds. 
All  thoughts  were  reflected  in  the  black  mirror  of  Cromwell's 
mind.  He  saw  his  way  through  the  national  movement,  and 
went  steadily  to  his  object,  not  so  much  introducing  events,  as 
making  them  introduce  themselves ;  and  acting  as  a  yrincijpium 


270 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


motus  upon  secondary  movers.  Controlled  and  moulded  by 
this  Argus-eye,  and  with  its  various  and  discordant  elements 
reconciled  or  stilled  by  this  ubiquitous  head,  the  Great  Rebellion 
arrived  at  its  climax  :  all  the  while  the  revolutionary  machine 
working  as  if  by  itself,  and  hiding  its  mover  behind  it. 

The  time  arrived  when  the  King  must  die.  In  the  beginning 
of  1648  Cromwell  held  a  meeting  of  army  leaders  at  Windsor, 
the  proceedings  of  which  are  reported  by  Adjutant-General 
Allen,  whom  Mr.  Carlyle  calls  “an  authentic  earnest  man.” 
Adjutant- General  Allen  first  describes  the  “  low,  weak,  divided, 
perplexed  condition  ”  of  the  army,  which  he  attributes  to  God’s 
wrath  upon  them,  for  their  “  backsliding  hearts,”  and  for 
“  having  fallen  in  the  past  year  into  treaties  with  the  King  and 
his  party,  which  had  proved  a  snare  unto  them,  and  led  them 
into  labyrinths.”  This  means  that  they  had  wanted  the  King 
to  give  way  to  them  ;  and  found  that  he  would  not.  He  then 
proceeds,  “  Accordingly  we  did  agree  to  meet  at  Windsor  Castle 
about  the  beginning  of  Forty-eight,  and  there  we  spent  one 
day  together  in  prayer ;  inquiring  into  the  causes  of  that  sad 
dispensation,  coming  to  no  farther  result  that  day ;  but  that  it 
was  still  our  duty  to  seek.  And  on  the  morrow  we  met  again 
in  the  morning,  where  many  spake  from  the  Word,  and  prayed  ; 
and  the  then  Lieutenant-General  Cromwell  did  press  very 
earnestly  on  all  there  present  to  a  thorough  consideration  of 
our  actions  as  an  army,  and  of  our  ways,  particularly  as  private 
Christians  :  to  see  if  any  iniquity  could  be  found  in  them,  and 
what  it  was;  that  if  possible  we  might  find  it  out,  and  so  remove 
the  cause  of  such  sad  rebukes  as  were  upon  us  (by  reason  of 
our  iniquities,  as  we  judged)  at  that  time.” 

Cromwell  having  contrived  this  meeting,  and  set  it  going  in 
one  direction,  left  it  to  itself,  and  the  officers  continued  their 
religious  exercises.  “  Major  Goffe  preached  upon  the  text, 
Proverbs  First  and  Twenty-third;  Turn  you  at  my  reproof : 
behold,,  I  will  pour  out  my  Spirit  unto  you,  I  will  make  known  my 
words  unto  you.  Which,  we  having  found  out  our  sin,  he  urged 
as  our  duty  from  those  words.  And  the  Lord  so  accompanied 
by  His  Spirit,  that  it  had  a  kindly  effect,  like  a  word  of  His, 
upon  most  of  our  hearts  that  were  then  present ;  which  begat 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell 


271 


in  us  a  great  sense,  a  shame  and  loathing  of  ourselves  for  our 
iniquities,  and  a  justifying  of  the  Lord  as  righteous  in  His  pro¬ 
ceedings  against  us.  And  in  this  path  the  Lord  led  us,  not 
only  to  see  our  sin,  but  also  our  duty ;  and  this  so  unani¬ 
mously  set  with  weight  upon  each  heart,  that  none  was  able 
hardly  to  speak  a  word  to  each  other  for  hitter  weeping/’ 
The  meeting,  after  this  solemn  preparation,  wound  up  with  the 
resolution, — “  that  it  was  their  duty  to  call  Charles  Stewart, 
that  man  of  blood,  to  an  account  for  the  blood  he  had  shed.” 
We  must  add,  that  some  months  after  this  resolution  had  been 
thus  come  to  by  a  meeting  which  Cromwell  had  himself  con¬ 
trived,  and  by  heads  which  he  had  himself  set  going,  on  the 
9th  of  January  preceding  the  fatal  30th,  he  rose  up  in  his  place 
in  Parliament,  and  addressed  this  sentence  to  the  Speaker — 
“  Sir,  if  any  man  whatsoever  have  carried  on  this  design  of 
deposing  the  King,  and  disinheriting  his  posterity,  or  if  any 
man  have  still  such  a  design,  he  must  be  the  greatest  traitor 
and  rebel  in  the  world.” 

The  army  had  come  to  its  resolution  before  the  mind  of 
Parliament  was  known.  The  question  of  the  acceptance  or 
rejection  of  the  treaty  of  Newport,  in  which  the  fate  of  Charles 
was  involved,  was  coming  on;  and  Parliament  had  yet  to  declare 
what  side  it  would  take.  To  London  therefore  went  the  army, 
determined  to  be  at  hand,  utrinque  yaratus ,  either  to  obey  or 
force  the  House,  according  as  the  House  was  inclined  to  go 
with  or  against  the  Windsor  resolution.  The  latter  of  these 
two  lines  was  found  necessary :  and  the  result  of  the  army’s 
move  was  the  famous  “  Pride’s  purge,”  which,  without  a  finger 
of  Cromwell’s  being  seen,  forcibly  cleared  all  obnoxious  remains 
of  loyalty  and  peace  from  the  walls  of  Parliament.  We  give 
the  proceedings  in  Mr.  Carlyle’s  colours  : — 

“  The  Army  at  Windsor  has  decided  on  the  morrow  that  it  will 
march  to  London ; — marches,  arrives,  accordingly,  on  Saturday 
December  2d;  quarters  itself  in  Whitehall,  in  St.  James’s;  ‘and 
other  great  vacant  houses  in  the  skirts  of  the  city  and  villages 
about,  no  offence  being  given  anywhere.’  In  the  drama  of  modern 
history  one  knows  not  any  graver,  more  noteworthy  scene ; — 
earnest  as  very  death  and  judgment.  They  have  decided  to  have 


272 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


justice,  these  men  ;  to  see  God’s  justice  done,  and  His  judgments 
executed  on  this  earth.  The  abysses  where  the  thunders  and  the 
splendours  are  bred, — the  reader  sees  them  again  laid  hare  :  and 
black  madness  lying  close  to  the  wisdom  which  is  brightest  and 
highest ; — and  owls  and  godless  men  who  hate  the  lightning  and 
the  light,  and  love  the  mephitic  dusk  and  darkness,  are  no  judges 
of  the  actions  of  heroes  !  4  Shedders  of  blood  1  ’  Yes,  blood  is 

occasionally  shed.  The  healing  surgeon,  the  sacrificial  priest,  the 
august  judge  pronouncer  of  God’s  oracles  to  men,  these  and  the 
atrocious  murderer  are  alike  shedders  of  blood ;  and  it  is  an  owl’s 
eye  that,  except  for  the  dresses  they  wear,  discerns  no  difference 
in  these  ! — Let  us  leave  the  owl  to  his  hootings  ;  let  us  get  on 
with  our  chronology  and  swift  course  of  events. 

“  On  Monday ,  4 th  December ,  the  House,  for  the  last  time,  takes 
4  into  farther  debate  ’  the  desperate  question,  Whether  his  Ma¬ 
jesty’s  concessions  in  that  treaty  of  Newport  are  a  ground  of  settle¬ 
ment  1 — debates  it  all  Monday ;  has  debated  it  all  Friday  and 
Saturday  before.  Debates  it  all  Monday,  4  till  five  o’clock  next 
morning ;  ’  at  five  o’clock  next  morning,  decides  it,  yea.  By  a 
majority  of  Forty-six,  One  hundred  and  twenty-nine  to  Eighty- 
three,  it  is  at  five  o’clock  on  Tuesday  morning  decided,  yea, 
they  are  a  ground  of  settlement.  The  Army  chiefs  and  the 
minority  consult  together,  in  deep  and  deepest  deliberation, 
through  the  night ;  not,  I  suppose,  without  prayer;  and  on  the 
morrow  morning  this  is  what  we  see  : 

44  Wednesday ,  6tli  December,  1648,  4  Colonel  Rich’s  regiment  of 
horse  and  Colonel  Pride’s  regiment  of  foot  were  a  guard  to  the 
Parliament ;  and  the  city  trainbands  were  discharged  ’  from  that 
employment.  Yes,  they  were  !  Colonel  Rich’s  horse  stand 
ranked  in  Palaceyard,  Colonel  Pride’s  foot  in  Westminster  Hall 
and  at  all  entrances  to  the  Commons  House,  this  day  :  and  in 
Colonel  Pride’s  hand  is  a  written  list  of  names,  names  of  the 
chief  among  the  Hundred  and  twenty-nine;  and  at  his  side  is  my 
Lord  Grey  of  Groby,  who,  as  this  Member  after  that  comes  up, 
whispers  or  beckons,  4  He  is  one  of  them  ;  he  cannot  enter  !  ’  And 
Pride  gives  the  word,  4  To  the  Queen’s  Court ;  ’  and  Member 
after  Member  is  marched  thither,  Forty-one  of  them  this  day  ; 
and  kept  there  in  a  state  bordering  on  rabidity,  asking,  By  what 
law  %  and  ever  again,  By  what  law  ?  Is  there  a  colour  or  faintest 
shadow  of  law,  to  be  found  in  any  of  the  Books,  Yearbooks,  Rolls 
of  Parliament,  Bractons,  Fletas,  Cokes  upon  Lyttleton  for  this  1 
Hugh  Peters  visits  them ;  has  little  comfort,  no  light  as  to  the 
law  ;  confesses,  4  It  is  by  the  law  of  necessity  ;  truly,  by  the  power 
of  the  sword.’ 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


273 

“  It  must  be  owned  the  constable’s  baton  is  fairly  down,  this 
day  ;  overborne  by  the  power  of  the  sword,  and  a  law  not  to  be 
found  in  any  of  the  Books.  At  night  the  distracted  Forty-one 
are  marched  to  Mr.  Duke’s  tavern  hard  by,  a  ‘  tavern  called  Hell ;  ’ 
and  very  imperfectly  accommodated  for  the  night.  Sir  Symonds 
D’Ewes,  who  has  ceased  taking  notes  long  since  ;  Mr.  William 
Prynne,  louder  than  any  in  the  question  of  law;  Waller,  Massey, 
Harley,  and  others  of  the  old  Eleven,  are  of  this  unlucky  Forty- 
one  ;  among  whom  too  we  count  little  Clement  Walker  ‘  in  his 
grey  suit  with  his  little  stick,’ — asking  in  the  voice  of  the  in- 
domitablest  terrier  or  Blenheim  cocker,  ‘  By  what  law  1  I  ask 
again,  by  what  law  ?  ’  Whom  no  mortal  will  ever  be  able  to 
answer.  Such  is  the  far-famed  Purging  of  the  House  by  Colonel 
Pride. 

“This  evening,  while  the  Forty-one  are  getting  lodged  in  Mr. 
Duke’s,  Lieutenant-General  Cromwell  came  to  town.  Pontefract 
Castle  is  not  taken  ;  he  has  left  Lambert  looking  after  that,  and 
come  up  hither  to  look  after  more  important  things. 

“  The  Commons  on  Wednesday  did  send  out  to  demand  ‘  the 
Members  of  this  House  ’  from  Colonel  Pride ;  but  Pride  made 
respectful  evasive  answer;* — could  not  for  the  moment  comply 
with  the  desires  of  the  honourable  House.  On  the  Thursday 
Lieutenant-General  Cromwell  is  thanked ;  and  Pride's  Purge  con¬ 
tinues  :  new  men  of  the  majority  are  seized  ;  others  scared  away 
need  no  seizing ; — above  a  Hundred  in  all ;  who  are  sent  into 
their  counties,  sent  into  the  Tower ;  sent  out  of  our  way,  and 
trouble  us  no  farther.  The  minority  has  now  become  majority  ; 
there  is  now  clear  course  for  it,  clear  resolution  there  has  for 
some  time  back  been  in  it. .  What  its  resolution  was,  and  its 
action  that  it  did  in  pursuance  thereof,  ‘  an  action  not  clone  in  a 
corner,  but  in  sight  of  all  the  nations,’  and  of  God  who  made 
the  nations,  we  know,  and  the  whole  world  knows  !  ” — Yol.  i.  pp. 
398-400. 

The  action  Mr.  Carlyle  means  is  the  trial  and  execution  of 
Charles. 

We  must  turn  an  instant  from  Cromwell  here  to  Mr. 
Carlyle.  He  despatches  Charles’s  trial  and  death  in  half  a 
page  ;  and  apparently  glad  to  get  out  of  the  region  of  guilty 
fact  into  that  of  bacchanalian  comment,  breaks  into  these 
remarks  upon  the  act  of  the  regicides  : — 

“  ‘  Ipsis  molossis  ferociores,  More  savage  than  their  own  mas¬ 
tiffs  !  ’  shrieks  Saumaise ;  shrieks  all  the  world,  in  unmelodious 
M.K.-I.J  S 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell 


274 

soul-confusing  diapason  of  distraction, — happily  at  length  grown 
very  faint  in  our  day.  The  truth  is,  no  modern  reader  can  con¬ 
ceive  the  then  atrocity,  ferocity,  unspeakability  of  this  fact.  First, 
after  long  reading  in  the  old  dead  pamphlets  does  one  see  the 
magnitude  of  it.  To  be  equalled,  nay  to  be  preferred  think  some, 
in  point  of  horror,  to  ‘  the  crucifixion  of  Christ.’  Alas,  in  these 
irreverent  times  of  ours,  if  all  the  Kings  of  Europe  were  to  be  cut 
in  pieces  at  one  swoop,  and  flung  in  heaps  in  St.  Margaret’s 
churchyard  on  the  same  day,  the  emotion  would,  in  strict  arith¬ 
metical  truth,  be  small  in  comparison  !  We  know  it  not,  this 
atrocity  of  the  English  regicides  ;  shall  never  know  it.  I  reckon 
it  perhaps  the  most  daring  action  any  body  of  men  to  be  met  with 
in  History  ever,  with  clear  consciousness,  deliberately  set  themselves 
to  do.  Dread  phantoms,  glaring  supernal  on  you, — when  once 
they  are  quelled  and  their  light  snuffed  out,  none  knows  the  terror 
of  the  phantom !  the  phantom  is  a  poor  paper-lantern  with  a 
candle-end  in  it,  which  any  whipster  dare  now  beard. 

“  This  action  of  the  English  regicides  did  in  effect  strike  a 
damp  like  death  through  the  heart  of  flunkeyism  universally  in 
this  world.  Whereof  flunkeyism,  cant,  cloth-worship,  or  whatever 
ugly  name  it  have,  has  gone  about  incurably  sick  ever  since ;  and 
is  now  at  length,  in  these  generations,  very  rapidly  dying.  The 
like  of  which  action  will  not  be  needed  for  a  thousand  years  again. 
Needed,  alas — not  till  a  new  genuine  hero-worship  has  arisen,  has 
perfected  itself ;  and  had  time  to  degenerate  into  a  flunkeyism 
and  cloth- worship  again  !  Which  I  take  to  be  a  very  long  date 
indeed.”- — Yol.  i.  pp.  401-403. 

We  are  here  told  that  the  death  of  Charles  “struck  a 
damp  like  death  through  the  heart  of  flunkeyism  universally 
in  this  world ;  ”  and  that  “  flunkeyism,  cant,  and  cloth - 
worship  have  gone  about  incurably  sick  ever  since.”  Mr. 
Carlyle  is  not  a  writer  who  studies  consistency,  and  we  do 
not  particularly  expect  it  from  him.  But  we  must  notice  this 
instance  of  departure  from  it.  If  there  is  one  conviction  more 
than  another  of  which  he  is  full,  it  is  the  conviction  that  the 
whole  world  is  now,  and  has  been  ever  since  this  particular  era 
now  before  us,  composed  of  “  flunkeys  ;  ”  and  that  “  flunkeyism 
and  cant  ”  are  the  flourishing,  salient,  vivacious,  and  dominant 
features  of  our  modern  system.  Then,  upon  his  own  showing, 
how  has  the  death  of  Charles  either  killed  flunkeyism  or  made 
it  sick  ?  What  heroism  can  he  point  to  as  the  offspring  of 


Carlyle s  Cromwell. 


275 


this  great  blow  ?  He  himself  gives  the  answer — Hone.  For 
whereas  the  established  system,  in  Charles’s  time,  was  an  old 
heroism  decayed,  there  has  been,  according  to  Mr.  Carlyle,  no 
heroism  ever  since  to  decay.  Is  it,  then,  that  we  have  got 
constitutional  rights  and  liberty  of  taxation  ?  He  despises 
these  results  :  he  laughs  unmercifully  at  the  Pyms,  Hampdens, 
and  Eliots,  with  their  constitutional  theories.  Then,  if  un¬ 
heroic  results  are  despised,  and  no  heroic  ones  are  apparent, 
will  he  explain  what  the  advantages  are  which  have  accrued 
from  this  event  ?  His  defence  of  the  morality  of  the  act  is  no 
more  successful.  It  really  amounts  to  no  more  than  this,  that 
bloodshed  is  grand  and  tragic,  and  colours  the  page  of  history 
warmly.  In  no  one  place  has  he  even  attempted  to  prove 
that  Charles  had  done  what  deserved  that  punishment ;  and, 
therefore,  we  must  suppose  that  the  merit  of  the  regicides  is 
entirely  independent  of  that  question,  in  his  view.  A  view 
which  thus  puts  aside  the  charge  of  murder,  not  as  untrue, 
but  as  irrelevant,  cannot  be  answered ;  but  there  is,  at 
the  same  time,  the  satisfaction  of  thinking  that  it  need 
not  be. 

Cromwell,  after  the  execution  of  Charles,  put  himself  again 
into  full  swing.  He  had  committed  the  great  and  turning  act 
of  his  life,  and  was  obliged  to  defend  it  and  carry  it  out.  He 
had  violated  a  deep,  ingrained,  national  reverence  ;  he  had  armed 
a  vast  body  of  moderate  Presbyterian  sentiment  against  him. 
He  had  to  put  down  opposition,  or  it  would  extinguish  him ; 
and  the  necessary  effect  of  his  situation  was,  to  nerve  and  un¬ 
fold  him.  He  stood,  now,  either  a  criminal  or  conqueror, 
before  the  nation  ;  either  at  her  bar,  or  at  her  head.  He  showed 
her,  accordingly,  now,  that  he  could  carry  on  the  course  he 
had  begun  ;  he  proved  himself,  as  Mr.  Carlyle  says,  a  “  strong  ” 
man  ;  he  made  the  nation  feel  what  he  was,  and  silenced  and 
overwhelmed  her  sensitiveness,  scruples,  doubts  and  retrograde 
longings,  by  a  brilliant  manifestation  of  strength,  and  career  of 
victory. 

Ireland  was  the  first  field  he  entered  on.  The  Irish  war 
called  for  his  services.  He  went  over.  We  have  no  space  for 
details,  and  must  content  ourselves  with  being  general.  Crom- 


276 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


well  was  a  match  for  the  Irish.  He  could  shed  blood  quite  as 
extensively,  quite  as  indiscriminately,  quite  as  remorselessly,  as 
they  could ;  and  with  much  more  deliberateness  and  system. 
To  a  person  with  his  objects,  and  in  his  situation,  that  was  the 
one  way  of  meeting  them :  and  he  adopted  it  without  a  mis¬ 
giving.  He  became  a  butcher.  Without  any  love  of  blood¬ 
shed  for  its  own  sake,  or  any  positive  element  of  cruelty  in  his 
nature,  he  looked  upon  blood  as  so  much  liquid,  which  was  to 
be  poured  out  before  a  strife  was  ended  and  an  object  gained. 
He  looked  on  the  scene  with  a  hard,  political  eye  ;  and  slaughter 
was  conducted  on  the  mechanical  principle  that  there  must  be 
means  before  an  end,  a  process  before  an  issue.  “  I  forbade  them,” 
he  says  quietly,  in  his  despatch  after  the  storming  of  Drogheda, 
“  I  forbade  them  to  spare  any  that  were  in  arms  in  the  town ;  and 
I  think  that  night  they  put  to  the  sword  about  two  thousand 
men.”  This  was  the  order  of  the  day  in  the  Irish  campaign;  and 
the  counties  of  Limerick,  Tipperary,  and  Kilkenny  were  reduced 
by  a  series  of  slaughters.  The  Irish  massacre  had  a  cool  and 
deliberate  counterpart ;  and  the  savage  native  spirit,  shocking 
as  a  specimen  of  ruthless  barbarianism,  was  encountered  by  an 
antagonist  of  iron,  and  the  still  more  effective  cruelty  of 
merciless  policy.  Mr.  Carlyle  takes  his  own  view  of  this 
campaign  : — 

“  But  in  Oliver’s  time,  as  I  say,  there  was  still  belief  in  the 
judgments  of  God  ;  in  Oliver’s  time,  there  was  yet  no  distracted 
jargon  of  ‘  abolishing  capital  punishment,’  of  Jean-Jacques  philan¬ 
thropy,  and  universal  rose-water  in  this  world  still  so  full  of  sin. 
Men’s  notion  was,  not  for  abolishing  punishments,  but  for  making 
laws  just  :  God  the  Maker’s  laws,  they  considered,  had  not  yet  got 
the  punishment  abolished  from  them  !  Men  had  a  notion,  that  the 
difference  between  good  and  evil  was  still  considerable ; — equal  to 
the  difference  between  heaven  and  hell.  It  was  a  true  notion. 
Which  all  men  yet  saw,  and  felt  in  all  fibres  of  their  existence, 
to  be  true.  Only  in  late  decadent  generations,  fast  hastening  to¬ 
wards  radical  change  or  final  perdition,  can  such  indiscriminate 
mashing-up  of  good  and  evil  into  one  universal  patent-treacle,  and 
most  unmedical  electuary,  of  Rousseau  sentimentalism,  universal 
pardon  and  benevolence,  with  dinner  and  drink  and  one  cheer 
more,  take  effect  in  our  earth.  Electuary  very  poisonous,  as  sweet 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


277 


as  it  is,  and  very  nauseous  ;  of  which  Oliver,  happier  than  we, 
had  not  yet  heard  the  slightest  intimation  even  in  dreams. 

“  The  reader  of  these  letters,  who  has  swept  all  that  very 
ominous  twaddle  out  of  his  head  and  heart,  and  still  looks  with  a 
recognising  eye  on  the  ways  of  the  Supreme  Powers  with  this 
world,  will  find  here,  in  the  rude  practical  state,  a  phenomenon 
which  he  will  account  noteworthy.  An  armed  soldier,  solemnly  con¬ 
scious  to  himself  that  he  is  a  soldier  of  God  the  Just, — a  consciousness 
which  it  well  beseems  all  soldiers  and  all  men  to  have  always  ; — 
armed  soldier,  terrible  as  death,  relentless  as  doom  !  doing  God’s 
judgments  on  the  enemies  of  God  !  It  is  a  phenomenon  not  of 
joyful  nature ;  no,  hut  of  awful,  to  be  looked  at  with  pious  terror 
and  awe.  Not  a  phenomenon  which  you  are  called  to  recognise 
with  bright  smiles,  and  fall  in  love  with  at  sight : — thou,  art  thou 
worthy  to  love  such  a  thing ;  worthy  to  do  other  than  hate  it,  and 
shriek  over  it  1  Darest  thou  wed  the  heaven’s  lightning,  then  ;  and 
say  to  it,  Godlike  One  1  Is  thy  own  life  beautiful  and  terrible  to 
thee  ;  steeped  in  the  eternal  depths,  in  the  eternal  splendours  1 
Thou  also,  art  thou  in  thy  sphere  the  minister  of  God’s  justice ; 
feeling  that  thou  art  here  to  do  it,  and  to  see  it  done,  at  thy  soul’s 
peril  V  Thou  wilt  then  judge  Oliver  with  increasing  clearness ; 
otherwise  with  increasing  darkness,  misjudge  him.” — Yol.  i.  pp. 
453,  454. 

Mr.  Carlyle  here  puts  himself  and  his  hero  under  the 
shelter  of  a  vague  grandeur  and  sublimity.  Cromwell  thought 
he  was  fighting  for  God ;  that,  whether  he  really  was,  or  was 
not,  was  a  grand  sentiment;  therefore  his  cause  was  a  grand  one : 
therefore  he  had  a  right  to  slaughter  people  for  it.  Such  is  Mr. 
Carlyle’s  reasoning;  he  then  introduces  his  thunder  and  light¬ 
ning,  and  supposes  he  has  settled  the  question.  Now,  what  was 
the  state  of  the  case  ?  All  religions  have,  indeed,  persecuted  in 
their  day.  But  Cromwell  was  the  head  of  a  party  which  had 
been,  ever  since  its  rise,  demanding  religious  liberty,  and  protest¬ 
ing  against  persecution.  The  Puritans  were  full  as  touchy  and 
thin-skinned  as  they  had  a  natural  right  to  be  ;  and  rather  more. 
They  go  over  to  Ireland  ;  and  their  idea  immediately  is,  to 
suppress  the  Eoman  Catholic  religion  by  force ;  to  confiscate 
and  transplant,  hunt  and  kill,  whip  and  cut  off  ears,  and 
puritanise  the  country  by  arms  and  legislation.  Now,  Mr. 
Carlyle  may  say  what  he  pleases  about  Cromwell’s  persecutions 


278 


Carlyle s  Cromwell. 


for  conscience’  sake ;  but  a  party  which  has  protested  against 
persecution,  as  such,  from  others,  has  a  difficult  ground  on 
which  to  maintain  its  own  right  to  persecute.  Common  sense 
condemns  such  inconsistency,  and  condemns  the  act  itself  the 
more  for  the  inconsistency.  For  example,  it  has  been  said,  and 
we  think  justly,  that  bribery  at  elections  was  worse  in  Whigs 
than  in  Tories ;  because  while  the  latter  professed  to  carry  out 
an  old  system  with  its  abuses,  if  the  former  bribed  they  acted 
against  peculiar  professions  of  purity.  Hypocrisy  is  not  a 
mere  numerical  addition  to,  but  an  ingredient  affecting  the 
very  body  of,  an  act.  It  is  revolting  to  see  a  party  like  the 
Puritan,  after  maintaining  the  tone  of  an  injured  dove  for  a 
century,  throw  over  at  once,  as  soon  as  ever  a  movement  lifts 
them  up,  all  their  old  language  with  a  sardonic  laugh — as  if 
they  only  meant  to  take  the  world  in — and  become  undisguised 
wolves  and  dragons. 

The  Scotch  war  (1650)  succeeded.  It  was  entered  on  by 
Cromwell  with  a  truly  characteristic  preface.  According  to 
Ludlow,  Cromwell,  on  the  preliminary  question  who  was  to 
go  to  Scotland  to  conduct  the  war,  “  acted  his  part  to  the  life.” 
“  I  really  thought,”  says  Ludlow,  “  that  he  wished  Fairfax  to 
go.”  He  made  Fairfax  pray  with  him  on  the  subject.  The 
issue  of  these  religious  exercises,  however,  was,  that  Fairfax  did 
not  go,  and  that  Cromwell  did.  And,  after  a  long  conversation 
with  Ludlow,  in  which  he  spake  of  the  great  providence  of  God 
now  upon  the  earth ;  “  in  particular,  talked  for  about  an  hour 
on  the  110th  Psalm  the  latter  announced  his  commission  as 
Captain- General  of  the  forces  for  the  Scotch  war. 

His  treatment  of  the  Presbyterians  was  conducted  with  the 
characteristic  mixture  of  genuine  party  unction  and  diplomatic 
skill.  He  had  his  old  augmentative  whole-length  appeal  to  the 
“  deliverances,”  and  “  providences,”  and  "  miracles,”  which  he 
wielded  forcibly  against  the  mixed,  retrograding .  ground  of  the 
Scotch,  who  upheld  the  Covenant  on  the  one  side,  and  would 
not  give  up  Charles  Stewart  on  the  other.  He  had  the 
vantage-ground,  as  a  lecturer,  over  the  Assembly  here ;  and  he 
used  it  powerfully.  He  hopes  they  are  not  going  back  to  the 
world  again,  and  to  the  flesh-pots  of  Egypt ;  or  yielding  to  the 


Carlyles  Cromwell.  279 

snares  of  a  carnal  policy.  “  There  may  be  a  Covenant  made 
with  death  and  hell !  I  will  not  say  yours  was  so.  But  judge 
if  such  things  have  a  politic  aim  :  to  avoid  the  overflowing 
scourge  ;  or,  to  accomplish  worldly  interests  ?  And  if  therein 
we  (like  you)  have  confederated  with  wicked  and  carnal  men, 
and  have  respect  for  them,  or  otherwise  have  drawn  them  in  to 
associate  with  us,  whether  this  be  a  Covenant  of  God,  and 
spiritual  ?  Bethink  yourselves  ;  we  hope  we  do.  ...  I  pray 
you  read  the  twenty-eighth  of  Isaiah,  from  the  fifth  to  the 

fifteenth  verse . The  Lord  give  you  and  us  understanding.” 

The  Assembly  in  vain  tried  to  lecture  him  in  return  :  he  was 
quite  out  of  their  reach  ;  and  he  retaliated  immediately,  by  a 
still  greater  and  more  crushing  demonstration  of  spirituality 
than  the  one  before.  The  Assembly  was  as  fairly  out-preached 
as  their  leader  at  Dunbar  was  out-generalled.  The  Scotch 
looked  on  while  the  spiritual  combat  proceeded  ;  and  the  easy 
assurance  of  the  Captain-General  had  its  effect  with  a  people 
accustomed  to  think  much  of  preaching,  as  a  test  of  greatness, 
and  who  saw  in  Cromwell  a  match,  in  this  department,  for  the 
collective  Presbyterianism  of  the  Kirk. 

Cromwell  returned  home  from  the  wars,  like  a  victorious 
general  in  the  days  of  the  Roman  republic,  and  had  now  to 
consider  what  use  to  make  of  his  victories,  and  how  he  was  to 
erect  a  political  ascendency  upon  the  success  of  his  military 
career. 

The  Long  Parliament  had  been  suffered  to  go  on  while  he 
was  gaining  his  victories.  It  did  no  harm  ;  it  served  as  a  com¬ 
missariat  for  him,  and  supplied  money.  But  it  was  a  different 
thing  when  the  victories  were  gained.  That  Assembly  denomi¬ 
nated  the  Rump  had  long  ceased  to  be  either  a  popular  or  an 
able  one.  The  paring  and  purging  it  had  undergone  had 
reduced  it  to  some  hundred  members,  who  sat  on  and  on, 
representing  the  country  theoretically,  but  constituting  no 
more  really  a  Parliament  than  the  benchers  of  the  Temple  or 
the  London  Corporation  did.  The  perpetuity  and  oligarchical 
snugness  which  made  it  feel  very  comfortable  within  doors 
excited  jealousy  without ;  and  the  Long  Parliament  prosed  and 
debated,  with  much  satisfaction  to  itself,  while  to  the  eye  of 


28o 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


the  nation  it  was  becoming  more  feeble  and  ridiculous  every 
day.  Mr.  Carlyle  describes  it  well.  We  will  do  him  the  jus¬ 
tice  to  say,  that  whenever  he  can,  that  is,  whenever  his  argu¬ 
ment  allows  him  to  ridicule  Puritans,  he  does  it  vigorously  : — 

“  And  now  if  we  practically  ask  ourselves,  what  is  to  become 
of  this  small  junto  of  men,  somewhat  above  a  hundred  in  all, 
hardly  above  half-a-hundred  the  active  part  of  them,  who  now  sit 
on  the  chair  of  authority  %  the  shaping-out  of  any  answer  will  give 
rise  to  considerations.  These  men  have  been  raised  thither  by 
miraculous  interpositions  of  Providence ;  they  may  be  said  to  sit 
there  only  by  continuance  of  the  like.  They  cannot  sit  there  for 
ever.  They  are  not  kings  by  birth,  these  men  ;  nor  in  any  of  them 
have  I  discovered  qualities  as  of  a  very  indisputable  king  by  attain¬ 
ment.  Of  dull  Bulstrode,  with  his  lumbering  law-pedantries,  and 
stagnant  official  self-satisfactions,  I  do  not  speak ;  nor  of  dusky 
tough  St.  John,  whose  abstruse  fanaticisms,  crabbed  logics,  and 
dark  ambitions,  issue  all,  as  was  very  natural,  in  ‘  decided  avarice  ’ 
at  last  : — not  of  these.  Harry  Marten  is  a  tight  little  fellow, 
though  of  somewhat  loose  life  ;  his  witty  words  pierce  yet,  as  light 
arrows,  through  the  thick  oblivious  torpor  of  the  generations ; 
testifying  to  us  very  clearly,  Here  was  a  right  hard-hearted,  stout¬ 
hearted  little  man,  full  of  sharp  fire  and  cheerful  light ;  sworn  foe 
of  cant  in  all  its  figures ;  an  indomitable  little  Poman  pagan  if  no 
better ;  but  Harry  is  not  quite  one’s  king  either ;  it  would  have 
been  difficult  to  be  altogether  loyal  to  Harry  !  Doubtful,  too,  I 
think,  whether  without  great  effort  you  could  have  worshipped 
even  the  younger  Vane.  A  man  of  endless  virtues,  says  Dryasdust, 
who  is  much  taken  with  him,  and  of  endless  intellect ; — but  you 
must  not  very  specially  ask,  How  or  where  %  Vane  was  the  friend 
of  Milton  :  that  is  almost  the  only  answer  that  can  now  be  given. 
A  man,  one  rather  finds,  of  light  fibre  this  Sir  Harry  Vane.  Grant 
all  manner  of  purity  and  elevation;  subtle  high  discourse;  much 
intellectual  and  practical  dexterity  :  there  is  an  amiable,  devoutly 
zealous,  very  pretty  man ; — but  not  a  royal  man  ;  alas,  no  !  On 
the  whole  rather  a  thin  man.  Whom  it  is  even  important  to  keep 
strictly  subaltern.  Whose  tendency  towards  the  abstract,  or 
temporary-theoretic,  is  irresistible ;  whose  hold  of  the  concrete,  in 
which  lies  always  the  perennial,  is  by  no  means  that  of  a  giant,  or 
born  practical  king ; — whose  ‘  astonishing  subtlety  of  intellect  ’ 
conducts  him  not  to  new  clearness,  but  to  ever-new  abstruseness, 
wheel  within  wheel,  depth  under  depth ;  marvellous  temporary 
empire  of  the  air  ; — wholly  vanished  now,  and  without  meaning  to 
any  mortal.  My  erudite  friend,  the  astonishing  intellect  that 


Carlyles  Cromwell.  281 

occupies  itself  in  splitting  hairs,  and  not  in  twisting  some  kind  of 
cordage  and  effectual  draught-tackle  to  take  the  road  with,  is  not 
to  me  the  most  astonishing  of  intellects  !  And  if,  as  is  probable, 
it  get  into  narrow  fanaticisms  ;  become  irrecognisant  of  the  Peren¬ 
nial  because  not  dressed  in  the  fashionable  Temporary  ;  become 
self-secluded,  atrabiliar,  and  perhaps  shrill-voiced  and  spasmodic, — 
what  can  you  do  but  get  away  from  it  with  a  prayer,  ‘  The  Lord 
deliver  me  from  thee  !  I  cannot  do  with  thee.  I  want  twisted 
cordage,  steady  pulling,  and  a  peaceable  bass  tone  of  voice ;  not 
split  hairs,  hysterical  spasmodics,  and  treble !  Thou  amiable, 
subtle,  elevated  individual,  the  Lord  deliver  me  from  thee!’” — 
Vol.  ii.  pp.  157-159. 

Cromwell  from  his  middle  ground,  as  Lord- General  with 
his  army  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  sitting  member  of  Parliament 
on  the  other,  allowed  this  state  of  things,  with  a  gentle  guid¬ 
ance,  to  work  its  own  result.  He  did  not  immediately  dissolve 
the  weak,  rickety  conclave,  and  act  simply  upon  his  military 
power.  A  less  subtle  head  would  have  done  this  ;  but  Crom¬ 
well,  who  saw,  as  we  said  above,  a  respect  for  Parliaments,  and  a 
love  of  constitution  and  law  in  the  English  public  mind,  con¬ 
tinued  the  mixed  line,  civil  and  military,  he  had  begun ;  and 
did  not,  even  with  the  splendid  addition  of  the  Irish  and  Scotch 
victories  to  support  him,  profess  military  despotism  and 
flourish  the  naked  sword.  He  saw  in  the  distance  a  time 
when  Parliament  would  be  useful  to  him,  just  as  the  army  had 
been,  and  when  its  constitutional  conservatism  would  have  to 
counterbalance  the  discontents  of  an  army  democracy.  A 
crown  hung  before  his  eye.  A  protectorship  would  naturally 
lead  to  a  throne.  Parliament,  now  against  him,  would  then  be 
for  him  :  the  army,  now  for  him,  would  then  be  against  him. 
He  could  not  disguise  that  Parliamentary  feeling  in  the  coun¬ 
try  whose  support  he  might  afterwards  need,  or  rest  his  whole 
strength  in  an  army,  whose  religious  and  democratical  jealousy 
he  would  afterwards  have  to  oppose. 

The  Long  Parliament  he  allowed  to  go  on  nearly  three 
whole  years  after  his  return.  By  that  time  its  dissolution  was 
obviously  necessary.  The  army  threatened  and  petitioned  : 
the  House  appealed  to  Cromwell.  Cromwell,  “  seemingly 
anxious  to  repress  the  army,  could  not  do  it.”  The  movement 


282 


Carlyle s  Cromwell. 


would  proceed,  in  spite  of  his  anxious  wish  to  put  it  down  ; 
and  the  result  was  that  a  bill  for  a  new  representation  was  at 
last  seen  on  its  road  through  Parliament.  But  the  bill 
lingered  amid  division  and  struggle.  The  army  wanted  one 
bill,  the  House  wanted  another,  and  each  side  was  bent  on  cut¬ 
ting  its  prospective  channel  to  the  representation  of  the  country. 
Amendments  alternated;  the  House  went  on  debating;  it 
seemed  as  if  the  Long  Parliament  never  would  end.  At  last 
word  came  that  the  House  was  carrying  its  own  bill  by  a 
ruse : — 

“  Hurrying  it  double-quick  through  all  the  stages.  Possible  ] 
New  message  that  it  will  be  law  in  a  little  while,  if  no  interposi¬ 
tion  take  place  !  Bulstrode  hastens  off  to  the  House  :  my  Lord- 
General,  at  first  incredulous,  does  also  now  hasten  off, — nay,  orders 
that  a  company  of  musketeers  of  his  own  regiment  attend  him. 
Hastens  off,  with  a  very  high  expression  of  countenance,  I  think  ; 
— saying  or  feeling  :  Who  would  have  believed  it  of  them  1  ‘  It 

is  not  honest;  yea,  it  is  contrary  to  common  honesty  !  5  ” — Yol.  ii. 
p.  178. 

Cromwell  was  an  awkward  subject  for  a  ruse,  as  the  event 
showed : — 

“  The  Parliament  sitting  as  usual,  and  being  in  debate  upon  the 
Bill  with  the  amendments,  which  it  was  thought  would  have  been 
passed  that  day,  the  Lord  General  Cromwell  came  into  the  House, 
clad  in  plain  black  clothes  and  grey  worsted  stockings,  and  sat 
down,  as  he  used  to  do,  in  an  ordinary  place.  For  some  time  he 
listens  to  this  interesting  debate  on  the  Bill ;  beckoning  once  to 
Harrison,  who  came  over  to  him,  and  answered  clubitatingly. 
Whereupon  the  Lord  General  sat  still,  for  about  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  longer.  But  now  the  question  being  to  be  put,  That  this  Bill 
do  now  pass,  he  beckons  again  to  Harrison,  says,  4  This  is  the 
time ;  I  must  do  it  !  ’ — and  so  c  rose  up,  put  off  his  hat,  and  spake. 
At  the  first,  and  for  a  good  while,  he  spake  to  the  commendation  of 
the  Parliament  for  their  pains  and  care  of  the  public  good ;  but 
afterwards  he  changed  his  style,  told  them  of  their  injustice,  delays 
of  justice,  self-interest,  and  other  faults,’ — rising  higher  and  higher 
into  a  very  aggravated  style  indeed.  An  honourable  member,  Sir 
Peter  Wentworth  by  name,  not  known  to  my  readers,  and  by  me 
better  known  than  trusted,  rises  to  order,  as  we  phrase  it ;  says, 
‘  It  is  a  strange  language  this  ;  unusual  within  the  walls  of  Parlia¬ 
ment  this  !  And  from  a  trusted  servant  too  ;  and  one  whom  we 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


283 


have  so  highly  honoured  ;  and  one  ’ — £  Come,  come  !  ’  exclaims  my 
Lord  General,  in  a  very  high  key,  *  we  have  had  enough  of  this,’ — 
and  in  fact,  my  Lord  General  now  blazing  all  up  into  clear  con¬ 
flagration,  exclaims,  £  I  will  put  an  end  to  your  prating,’  and  steps 
forth  into  the  floor  of  the  House,  and  £  clapping  on  his  hat,’  and 
occasionally  £  stamping  the  floor  with  his  feet,’  begins  a  discourse 
which  no  man  can  report  !  He  says — Heavens  !  he  is  heard  say¬ 
ing  :  £It  is  not  fit  that  you  should  sit  here  any  longer  !  You 
have  sat  too  long  here  for  any  good  you  have  been  doing  lately. 
You  shall  now  give  place  to  better  men ! — Call  them  in  !  ’  adds  he 
briefly  to  Harrison  in  word  of  command  ;  and  £  some  twenty  or 
thirty’ grim  musketeers  enter,  with  bullets  in  their  snaphances ; 
grimly  prompt  for  orders ;  and  stand  in  some  attitude  of  carry- 
arms  there.  Veteran  men  :  men  of  might  and  men  of  war,  their 
faces  are  as  the  faces  of  lions,  and  their  feet  are  swift  as  the  roes 
upon  the  mountains ; — not  beautiful  to  honourable  gentlemen  at 
this  moment ! 

“  £  You  call  yourselves  a  Parliament,’  continues  my  Lord  General, 
in  clear  blaze  of  conflagration  :  ‘  You  are  no  Parliament ;  I  say  you 
are  no  Parliament  !  Some  of  you  are  drunkards,’  and  his  eye 
flashes  on  poor  Mr.  Chaloner,  an  official  man  of  some  value,  ad¬ 
dicted  to  the  bottle ;  £  some  of  you  are - ’  and  he  glares  into 

Harry  Marten,  and  the  poor  Sir  Peter  who  rose  to  order,  lewd 
livers  both  ;  £  living  in  open  contempt  of  God’s  commandments. 
Following  your  own  greedy  appetites,  and  the  devil’s  command¬ 
ments.  Corrupt  unjust  persons,’  and  here  I  think  he  glanced  £  at 
Sir  Bulstrode  Whitlocke,  one  of  the  Commissioners  of  the  Great 
Seal,  giving  him  and  others  very  sharp  language,  though  he  named 
them  not :’  £  Corrupt  unjust  persons  ;  scandalous  to  the  profession 
of  the  Gospel :  how  can  you  be  a  Parliament  for  God’s  peojfle  'l 
Depart,  I  say ;  and  let  us  have  done  with  you.  In  the  name  of 
God, — go  !  ’ 

££  The  House  is  of  course  all  on  its  feet, — uncertain  almost 
whether  not  on  its  head  :  such  a  scene  as  was  never  seen  before  in 
any  House  of  Commons.  History  reports  with  a  shudder  that  my 
Lord  General,  lifting  the  sacred  mace  itself,  said,  £  What  shall  we 
do  with  this  bauble  ?  Take  it  away  !  ’ — and  gave  it  to  a 
musketeer.  And  now, — £  Fetch  him  down  !  ’  says  he  to  Harrison, 
flashing  on  the  Speaker.  Speaker  Lenthall,  more  an  ancient 
Poman  than  anything  else,  declares,  He  will  not  come  till  forced. 

£  Sir,’  said  Harrison,  £  I  will  lend  you  a  hand  ;  5  on  which  Speaker 
Lenthall  came  down,  and  gloomily  vanished.  They  all  vanished  ; 
flooding  gloomily,  clamorously  out,  to  their  ulterior  businesses,  and 
respective  places  of  abode  :  the  Long  Parliament  is  dissolved  ! 


284 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


‘  It’s  yon  that  have  forced  me  to  this/  exclaims  my  Lord  General  : 
4  I  have  sought  the  Lord  night  and  day,  that  Lie  would  rather  slay 
me  than  put  me  upon  the  doing  of  this  work.’  4  At  their  going 
out,  some  say  the  Lord  General  said  to  young  Sir  Harry  Vane, 
calling  him  by  his  name,  That  he  might  have  prevented  this  ;  but 
that  he  was  a  juggler,  and  had  not  common  honesty.’  4  0  Sir 
Harry  Yane,  thou  with  thy  subtle  casuistries  and  abstruse  hair¬ 
splittings,  thou  art  other  than  a  good  one,  I  think.  The  Lord 
deliver  me  from  thee,  Sir  Harry  Yane  !  ’  4  All  being  gone  out,  the 

door  of  the  House  was  locked,  and  the  key,  with  the  mace,  as  I 
heard,  was  carried  away  by  Colonel  Otley ;  4  and  it  is  all  over,  and 
the  unspeakable  catastrophe  has  come,  and  remains.” — Yol.  ii. 
pp.  179-181. 

“We  did  not  hear  a  dog  bark  at  their  going,”  was  Crom¬ 
well’s  remark  upon  the  event  afterwards.  It  is  a  significant 
one.  He  had  chosen  exactly  the  proper  moment  for  the  act  of 
force,  when  Parliament  had  at  last  tired  the  people  out,  and 
force  introduced  itself  like  nature. 

In  December  1653,  eight  months  from  this  time,  we  see 
Cromwell  Lord  Protector,  elected  by  a  council  of  officers  44  after 
much  seeking  of  God  by  prayer,”  and  furnished  with  44  an  in¬ 
strument  of  Government,”  and  a  44  Council.”  He  was  inaugu¬ 
rated  with  due  ceremony  in  the  44  Chancery  Court  in  West¬ 
minster  Hall  in  a  chair  of  state and  44  Judges  in  their  robes, 
Lord  Mayors  with  caps  of  maintenance,  state  coaches,  out¬ 
riders,  outrunners,  and  great  shoutings  of  the  people,”  accom¬ 
panied  him  from  and  to  Whitehall.  44  His  Highness  was  in  a 
rich  but  plain  suit — black  velvet,  with  a  cloak  of  the  same, 
about  his  hat  a  broad  band  of  gold.”  Cromwell  now  appears 
in  a  new  character.  He  assumes  44  somewhat  of  the  state  of  a 
king,”  has  lifeguards,  ushers,  and  gentlemen-in-waiting.  He 
rides  in  state  to  open  his  Parliaments  with  gentlemen  and 
officers  and  pages  and  lacqueys  richly  clothed  preceding  him 
bareheaded.  His  captain  of  the  guard,  his  master  of  the  cere¬ 
monies,  his  master  of  the  horse,  the  44  Commissioners  of  the 
Great  Seal,”  the  44  Commissioners  of  Treasury,  the  purse- 
bearer,  the  sword-bearer,  the  four  maces,”  attend  him.  On 
these  occasions  he  sits  in  44  a  chair  of  state  set  upon  steps,  with 
a  canopy  over  it,  in  the  painted  chamber ;  his  Highness  sits 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


2S5 


covered,  and  the  members  upon  benches  round  about  sit  all 
bare.”  He  receives  congratulatory  addresses  from  foreign 
parts.  In  “  the  banqueting-house  of  Whitehall  hung  with 
arras,”  galleries  full  of  ladies,  and  “  lifeguards  in  grey  frock- 
coats  with  velvet  welts,”  welcomed  the  Swedish  ambassador. 
The  Protector  stood  on  a  foot-pace  and  carpet,  “  with  a  chair 
of  state  behind  him,  and  the  ambassador  thrice  lifting  up  his 
noble  hat  and  feathers,  saluted  him  thrice  as  he  advanced.” 
Cromwell,  now  no  longer  an  adventurer,  but  supreme  magis¬ 
trate,  adopted  the  tone  now  termed  “  conservative.”  He 
scolded  levellers,  praised  order,  advocated  the  established  dis¬ 
tinctions  of  “  noblemen,  gentlemen,  and  yeomen,”  defended  the 
nation’s  “  natural  magistracy”  with  a  stiffness  and  relish  which 
the  most  rigid  legitimist  could  not  complain  of.  “  Liberty  of 
conscience  and  liberty  of  the  subject,”  he  exclaims  in  his  open¬ 
ing  speech  to  his  first  Protectorate  Parliament,  “  two  as  glorious 
things  to  be  contended  for  as  any  that  God  hath  given  us ; 
yet,  both  these  abused  for  the  patronising  of  villanies !”  A 
disapprobation  of  dreaminess,  fancifulness,  and  eccentricity 
appeared  in  the  Lord  Protector.  He  disliked  utopian  schemes. 
He  lectured  the  democratic  “army  independency”  who  had 
raised  him,  and  he  opposed  to  the  arguments  of  the  Fifth- 
Monarchy  men  the  same  kind  of  strong  common  sense  that  a 
man  of  ten  thousand  a  year  now  would  to  a  Chartist  theoriser. 
“  Judaical  law,  instead  of  our  known  laws  settled  amongst  us,” 
would  never  do,  he  declared.  And  as  to  Christ’s  reign  upon 
earth,  he  hoped  that  “  J esus  Christ  would  have  a  time  to  set 
up  His  reign  in  our  hearts  by  subduing  corruption  and  lust;” 
but  as  to  any  visible  reign,  he  thought  it  far  enough  off.  He 
abounded  in  sensible  interpretations,  judicious  parryings, 
quieting  appeals ;  and  he  threw  himself  into  the  English  pru¬ 
dential  mould  and  point  of  view.  Cromwell  was  not  insensible 
to  the  substantial  charms  of  station,  and  the  Lord  Protector 
and  occupier  of  Windsor  Castle  felt  his  new  position,  and  saw 
with  altered  eyes. 

Cromwell  fairly  lodged  in  the  Protectorate,  and  living  at 
Windsor  and  Whitehall,  encountered  cold  looks  from  old 
brother  officers,  with  whose  rigid  ideas  this  new  magnificence 


286 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell . 


did  not  agree,  and  who  began  shrewdly  to  suspect  that  their 
Lord  General  had  deceived  them.  These  old  officers  were 
scrupulous,  hard,  severe  men ;  Cromwell  tried  to  soothe  and 
coax  them  in  vain  ;  they  would  not  be  coaxed  :  he  spoke 
affectionately  and  winningly  to  them ;  they  would  not  be 
deprecated.  They  and  their  republicanism  were  down  ;  he 
was  up  ;  they  knew  words  could  not  alter  the  fact ;  they  also 
knew  that  it  was  because  they  could  not,  that  Cromwell  used 
them.  Mr.  Carlyle  describes  one  of  these  interviews  with  his 
peculiar  bias  and  tenderness.  “  One  is  sorry  for  Cromwell  in 
his  old  days.  His  complaint  is  incessant  of  the  heavy  burden 
Providence  has  laid  upon  him.  Heavy  ;  which  he  must  bear 
till  death.  Old  Colonel  Hutchinson,  as  his  wife  relates  it, 
Hutchinson  his  old  battle-mate,  coming  to  see  him  on  some 
indispensable  business,  much  against  his  will — Cromwell 
‘  follows  him  to  the  door’  in  a  most  fraternal  domestic  con¬ 
ciliatory  style ;  begs  that  he  would  be  reconciled  to  him,  his 
old  brother  in  arms ;  says  how  much  it  grieves  him  to  be  mis¬ 
understood,  deserted  by  true  fellow-soldiers,  dear  to  him  of 
old ;  the  rigorous  Hutchinson,  cased  in  his  Presbyterian  for¬ 
mula,  sullenly  goes  his  way.” 

So  deeply  does  Mr.  Carlyle  sympathise  with  his  afflicted 
hero.  How  what  was  the  real  state  of  the  case  in  this  inter¬ 
view  ?  Cromwell  had  got  entirely  what  he  wanted,  had  raised 
himself  on  the  back  of  Colonel  Hutchinson  and  such  men  to 
his  present  position,  and  having  used  their  republicanism 
while  it  served  his  turn,  cast  it  off  when  it  had  served  it.  The 
act  being  done,  he  was  quite  willing  to  pour  all  the  consolation 
that  the  tongue  could  supply  into  the  Coloners  ears  ;  his  grief 
and  his  regret  at  the  Colonel’s  state  of  feeling  were  deep. 
Having  thoroughly,  effectually,  and  for  good,  circumvented  the 
old  republicans,  he  said — Let  us  be  brothers  ;  let  us  love  one 
another,  let  us  embrace ;  this  misunderstanding  is  all  of  your 
raising.  I  am  willing,  nay  anxious  to  be  friends  with  you. 
But  you  refuse.  Colonel  Hutchinson,  who  perfectly  under¬ 
stood  the  meaning  of  this  remonstrance,  determined  to  enjoy 
the  only  consolation  which  was  left  him,  that  of  showing  that 
he  understood  it ;  and  answered  by  a  stern  Ajacian  movement 
to  the  door. 


287 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell 

Cromwell  had  not  a  nature  at  all  disinclined  to  the  sphere 
of  state  which  now  surrounded  him.  He  exhibits  in  the  course 
of  these  volumes  considerable  traces  of  the  Puritan  country 
gentleman.  He  keenly  appreciates  the  terra  firma  of  landed 
property.  He  conducts  a  “jointure’"  transaction  with  skill. 
The  bargaining  which  takes  place  between  himself  and  another 
Puritan  country  gentleman,  in  an  affair  of  the  latter  class, 
running  through  fourteen  or  fifteen  letters  in  this  collection, 
is  characteristic.  The  gentleman  on  the  other  side  is  sharp  as 
well  as  Cromwell ;  and  the  two  Puritan  grandees  have  a  great 
difficulty  to  surmount  in  their  mutual  penetration  and  vigi¬ 
lance.  The  manor  of  Hursley,  in  Hampshire,  now  more  fortu¬ 
nate  in  its  lord,  was  then  owned  by  a  Puritan  country  gentle¬ 
man  of  the  name  of  Mayor.  Between  him  and  Cromwell  a 
treaty  is  opened  which  has  for  its  object  the  marriage  of 
Eichard  Cromwell  to  Miss  Dorothy  Mayor,  the  heiress  of 
Hursley.  The  affair  begins  with  a  confidential  letter  of  Crom¬ 
well  to  Colonel  Eichard  Horton,  familiarly  called  Die  Horton, 
a  useful  friend  of  his,  who  is  pressed  into  the  service  on  the 
occasion.  He  says  there  that  in  consequence  of  what  he  hears 
of  the  “godliness”  and  “estate”  of  the  Mayor  family,  he  is 
inclined  to  the  match,  though  “  concerning  it”  he  still  “  desires 
to  wait  upon  God.”  The  details  of  the  transaction  then  begin, 
and  each  side  enumerates  its  terms.  Among  the  rest,  Mr. 
Mayor  demands  a  settlement  of  land  to  the  amount  of  £400 
per  annum  on  the  future  pair,  and  is  also  particularly  anxious 
that  that  settlement  should  be  made  out  of  the  “  old  land,”  and 
not  out  of  the  land  given  to  the  Lord  General  by  Parliament. 
The  Lord  General’s  Parliamentary  acres  did  not  offer  so  safe  or 
comfortable  a  tenure,  in  Mr.  Mayor’s  opinion,  as  the  family 
ones.  Cromwell  has  also  the  same  predilection  for  the  “  old 
land.”  He  therefore  wants  Mayor  to  take  the  Parliamentary 
land.  But  Mayor  is  obstinate,  and  Cromwell  is  obliged  to 
compromise,  not  without  complaint ;  “  what  you  demand  of 
me  is  very  high  in  all  points,”  he  says  to  Mayor.  In  his  first 
letter  he  is  ready  to  give  up  the  point  of  the  old  land,  if  the 
£400  is  reduced  to  £300,  and  if  his  wife  has  the  old  land  for 
her  life.  The  next  letter  reduces  this  offer  by  a  half,  and 


288  Carlyle s  Cromwell. 

bargains  for  tbe  £150  of  the  £300  being  from  the  old  land,  and 
the  other  £150  from  the  new.  While  Mr.  Mayor  thus  keeps 
sharp  watch  over  Cromwell,  Cromwell  on  the  other  hand  keeps 
sharp  watch  over  Mr.  Mayor.  The  concession  on  the  latter’s 
part  that  the  Hursley  estate  is  to  be  settled  in  fee-simple  on 
Miss  Dorothy  Mayor,  Eichard  Cromwell’s  intended  wife,  is  not 
so  clearly  expressed  in  the  legal  document,  but  that  a  Mr. 
Barton,  a  kinsman,  who  acts  as  Mayor’s  agent  in  the  matter,  is 
unable  to  see  such  distinct  meaning  in  the  document’s  language. 
Mr.  Barton,  without  committing  the  absent  Mr.  Mayor  to  an 
uncertainty,  throws  a  rather  disagreeable  one  of  his  own  over 
this  important  point.  Cromwell,  who  has  no  idea  of  being  thus 
saddled  with  an  uncertainty,  and  dropped  between  a  principal 
and  his  agent,  writes  a  letter  to  Mr.  Mayor  himself,  repeating 
very  determinately  his  original  demand  of  the  estate  in  fee- 
simple.  “  I  have  appealed,”  he  says,  “  to  yours  and  to  any 
counsel  in  England  whether  it  be  not  just  and  equal  that  I 
insist  thereupon;”  and  he  requests  an  explanation  of  the 
clauses’  uncertainty,  hinting  delicately  that  he  is  not  quite  so 
sure  that  Mr.  Mayor  himself  has  not  had  some  share  in  creating 
it,  though  the  kinsman  has  been  the  outward  suggester ;  as  an 
evidence  of  which  suspicion,  he  observes  drily  that  he  is  ex¬ 
pected  to  agree  with  all  the  kinsman’s  interpretations.  “  This 
misunderstanding” — he  adds  parenthetically  (and  Cromwell 
often  gives  his  chief  meaning  in  a  parenthesis) — ■“  if  it  be  yours  as 
it  is  your  kinsman's  put  a  stop  to  the  business  ;  so  that  our 
counsel  could  not  proceed  until  your  pleasure  herein  was 
known.  Wherefore  it  was  thought  fit  to  desire  Mr.  Barton  to 
have  recourse  to  you  to  know  your  mind ;  he  alleging  he  had 
no  authority  to  understand  that  expression  so,  but  the  contrary, 
which  was  thought  not  a  little  strange,  even  by  your  own 
counsel.  ...  I  may  take  the  boldness  to  say  there  is  nothing 
expected  from  me,  but  I  agree  to  your  kinsman’s  sense  to  a 
tittle.” 

So  much  for  a  jointure  correspondence.  We  are  aware 
that  the  introductory  arrangements  in  forming  these  alliances 
are  apt  to  create  mutual  suspicion  and  vigilance  in  gentlemen 
of  property,  and  that  money  is  a  contentious  material.  Many 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


289 


respectable  gentlemen,  both  before  and  since  the  age  of  Crom¬ 
well  and  Mr.  Mayor,  have  done  what  they  did.  The  spectacle' 
however,  of  two  Puritan  heads  conducting  a  family  transac¬ 
tion  in  the  way  just  presented  is  not  without  its  point ;  and  in 
the  union  of  deep,  spiritual,  and  keen  pecuniary  sentiments, 
sustained  throughout  a  long  correspondence,  we  have  a  mix¬ 
ture  not  a  little  characteristic  of  the  system  and  of  the  times. 

Cromwell  had  no  easy  seat  in  his  new  chair  of  state.  He 
was  perpetually  watched  by  the  restless  offshoots  of  that  fierce 
party  which  he  had  himself  organised,  and  on  whose  shoulders 
he  had  risen.  The  “  army  independency  ”  gave  birth  to  a 
variety  of  furious,  mad,  and  murderous  sects  and  knots,  each 
fired  with  its  own  dream,  and  looking  on  the  Lord  Protector  as 
a  traitor  and  deserter,  a  man  who  had  gone  back  to  the  world, 
and  was  bringing  down  a  carnal  despotism  upon  the  backs  of 
his  old  friends  and  followers.  His  life  was  attempted ;  plots 
were  laid.  “  Anabaptism  Sansculottism  ”  was  venomous,  and 
from  holes  and  corners  the  grim  Fifth-Monarchy  corporal  came 
out,  with  desperate  look  and  steel  in  his  hand.  The  old  army 
preacher  held  forth  in  rooms  at  taverns,  or  in  his  own  con¬ 
venticle,  if  he  had  one,  and  inflamed  the  passions  of  a  disap¬ 
pointed  and  unemployed  soldiery.  One  specimen  will  do  for 
many : — 

“  Sunday ,  18 th  December  1 65 3.  A  certain  loud- tongued,  loud- 
minded  Mr.  Feak,  of  Anabaptist-Leveller  persuasion,  with  a 
colleague,  seemingly  Welsh,  named  Powell,  have  a  preaching-estab¬ 
lishment,  this  good  while  past,  in  Blackfriars ;  a  preaching-estab¬ 
lishment  every  Sunday,  which  on  Monday  evening  becomes  a 
National-Charter  Convention  as  we  should  now  call  it.  There 
Feak,  Powell  and  Company  are  in  the  habit  of  vomiting  forth  from 
their  own  inner-man,  into  other  inner-men  greedy  of  such  pabulum, 
a  very  flamy,  fuliginous  set  of  doctrines,— -such  as  the  human  mind, 
superadding  Ahabaptistry  to  Sansculottism,  can  make  some  attempt 
to  conceive.  Sunday,  the  1 8th,  which  is  two  days  after  the  Lord 
Protector’s  installation,  this  Feak-Powell  meeting  was  unusually 
large;  the  Feak-Powell  inner-man  unusually  charged.  Elements  of 
soot  and  fire  really  copious ;  fuliginous-flamy  in  a  very  high  degree  ! 
At  a  time,  too,  when  all  doctrine  does  not  satisfy  itself  with  spout¬ 
ing,  but  longs  to  become  instant  action.  ‘  Go  and  tell  your  Pro¬ 
tector,’  said  the  Anabaptist  Prophet,  ‘that  he  has  deceived  the 

M.E.-I.]  t 


290 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


Lord’s  people;  that  he  is  a  perjured  villain/ — ‘  will  not  reign  long/ 
or  I  am  deceived ;  1  will  end  worse  than  the  last  Protector  did/ 
the  tyrant  Crooked  Richard  !  Say,  I  said  it ! — A  very  foul  chimney, 
indeed,  here  got  on  fire.  And  ‘  Major-General  Harrison,  the  most 
eminent  man  of  the  Anabaptist  party,  being  consulted  whether  he 
would  own  the  new  Protectoral  Government,  answered  frankly, 
No;’ — was  thereupon  ordered  to  retire  home  to  Staffordshire,  and 
keep  quiet.” — Yol.  ii.  pp.  234,  235. 

But  Cromwell’s  great  difficulty  lay  in  the  obstinacy  of  the 
nation  at  large.  A  few  fiery  fanatics  would  not  hurt  him 
much,  if  they  did  not  kill  him ;  if  their  shot  missed,  their 
power  was  gone.  But  the  nation  at  large  in  one  way,  and 
Parliament  in  another,  opposed  an  obstinate  material  to  Crom¬ 
well,  which  all  his  policy  could  not  reduce  to  submission.  His 
military  swing  over,  and  the  civil  scene  begun,  Cromwell’s 
chariot-wheels  were  taken  off,  and  he  drave  heavily.  The 
English  are  not  governed  by  individuals  ;  it  is  not  their  nature 
to  be.  Law,  custom,  progress  control  them.  Their  governor 
must  act  under  the  shield  of  old  prestige,  or  in  the  groove  of  a 
constitution.  The  man  who  leads  them  must  be  as  much  as 
possible  an  instrument,  and  a  great  impersonal  power  in  the 
background  must  outweigh  and  absorb  the  figure  of  the  indi¬ 
vidual  ruler.  Genius  has  not,  what  some  will  call,  its  due 
triumph  and  success  amongst  us  as  a  nation.  It  has  not  a 
clear  course.  That  strongest  offspring  of  invisible  nature  meets 
its  match ;  it  is  taught,  along  with  all  other  powers  in  this 
world,  a  lesson — it  too  has  to  bow  down.  Deep  subtle  strength 
and  deep  piercing  strength  encounter  deep  inert  strength. 
Genius  meets  a  stone  wall.  The  consequence  is  that  she  can 
go  no  further.  And  an  awkward  and  uneasy  stationariness, 
which  keeps  her  seesawing  and  balancing  herself  upon  one 
spot,  succeeds  the  bold  onward  progress.  Nor  in  the  contest 
of  mere  power  is  this  less  just  an  issue  than  the  contrary  one. 
Genius  as  an  ethical  gift  appeals  to  our  poetry  and  reverence ; 
as  simple  power  it  appeals  to  neither.  If  it  be  the  latter,  let 
it  take  its  chance.  Let  matter  bruise,  crush,  and  trample  upon 
it,  if  matter  can ;  matter  is  power  as  well  as  it,  let  the  two 
powers  fight  it  out  together.  Let  the  great  earth-born  power, 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


291 


the  subtle  and  versatile,  or  the  penetrating  and  impetuous 
force  of  intellectual  nature,  if  genius  is  such,  be  chained  and 
fastened  and  weighted  by  dull  material  minds.  If  dulness  can 
do  this,  dulness  is  the  stronger,  and  enjoys  its  right.  We  have 
no  sympathy  with  the  view  which  claims  refined  pity  for 
“  magnificent  minds,”  who  have  been  disappointed  in  the  ex¬ 
pectation  that  they  would  have  it  all  their  own  way  in  the 
world,  which  weeps  when  impetus  is  stopped  by  weight,  and 
brilliant  is  clogged  by  stupid  power.  Let  genius  ride  over 
vulgar  strength,  and  vulgar  strength  press  upon  genius  again 
on  the  world’s  arena.  Lor  thus  it  is  that  all  the  “princi¬ 
palities  and  powers,”  spiritual  and  material,  of  this  world  are 
in  their  turn  brought  to  shame  ;  “  that  the  loftiness  of  man  is 
bowed  down,  and  the  haughtiness  of  men  is  laid  low.”  Power 
humbles  power,  man  grinds  man,  and  the  world  is  made  its 
own  executioner  and  judge.  Cromwell’s  government  was  the 
government  of  a  single  genius.  England  had  no  fancy  for 
being  governed  by  a  genius ;  she  struggled,  and  would  not  go 
on  under  him.  Compare  Erance  under  Napoleon — blindly 
fond  of,  adoring  and  idolising,  her  master,  proud  of  her  chains 
and  absorbed  in  her  hero — with  Puritan  England  under  Crom¬ 
well. 

Cromwell’s  Parliaments  presented  for  management  an  ob¬ 
stinate  incurable  mixture  of  pedantic  constitutionalism  and 
prosing  fanaticism.  He  could  do  nothing  with  them.  They 
would  talk,  they  would  do  nothing  else  but  talk,  they  were 
magnanimously  insensible  to  all  wishes,  all  hints  from  high 
quarters,  and  only  felt  the  physical  force  which  stopped  their 
mouths.  Instead  of  voting  money  they  discussed  constitu¬ 
tional  law,  and,  in  particular,  the  grounds  of  Cromwell’s  own 
position.  The  Protectorship  did  not  approve  itself  to  them. 
The  lawyers  disliked  it  because  it  rested  on  no  statute ;  the 
stiff  republicans  for  a  broader  reason.  These  constitutionalists, 
complains  Mr.  Carlyle,  would  go  on — 

“  Check,  check, — like  maladroit  ship-carpenters  hammering, 
adzing,  sawing  at  the  ship  of  the  State,  instead  of  diligently  caulk¬ 
ing  and  paying  it  -  idly  gauging  and  computing,  nay  recklessly 
tearing  up  and  re-modelling; — when  the  poor  ship  could  hardly 


292 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


keep  the  water  as  yet,  and  the  pirates  and  sea-krakens  were 
gathering  round  !” — Vol.  ii.  p.  317. 

“  This  first  Protectorate  Parliament,  we  said,  was  not  success¬ 
ful.  It  chose,  judiciously  enough,  old  Lenthall  for  Speaker;  ap¬ 
pointed,  judiciously  enough,  a  day  of  general  fasting : — hut  took, 
directly  after  that,  into  constitutional  debate  about  sanctioning  the 
form  of  Government  (which  nobody  was  specially  asking  it  to 
‘  sanction  ’) ;  about  Parliament  and  single  person ;  powers  of  single 
person  and  of  parliament ;  coordination,  subordination ;  and  other 
bottomless  subjects ; — in  which  getting  always  the  deeper  the  more 
it  puddled  in  them,  inquiry  or  intimation  of  inquiry  rose  not  ob¬ 
scurely  in  the  distance,  whether  this  government  should  be  by  a 
parliament  and  single  person  'l  These  things  the  honourable  gen¬ 
tlemen,  with  true  industry,  debated  in  grand  committee,  ‘  from 
eight  in  the  morning  till  eight  at  night,  with  an  hour  for  refresh¬ 
ment  about  noon,’  debates  waxing  ever  hotter,  question  ever  more 
abstruse, — through  Friday,  Saturday,  Monday;  ready,  if  Heaven 
spared  them,  to  debate  it  farther  for  unlimited  days.  Constitu¬ 
tional  presbyterian  persons,  use-and-wont  neuters ;  not  without  a 
spicing  of  sour  republicans,  as  Bradshaw,  Haselrig,  Scott,  to  keep 
the  batch  in  leaven.” — Yol.  ii.  p.  277. 

The  long-winded  fanaticism  of  these  Parliaments  was  a  no 
less  striking  feature  in  them.  One  of  them,  the  second  in  the 
Protectorate,  Mr.  Carlyle  calls  the  James  ISTayler  Parliament. 
ISTayler  was  a  poor  mad  Quaker,  who  had  ridden  in  procession 
through  the  streets  of  Bristol,  attended  by  some  female  dis¬ 
ciples. 

“  Its  next  grand  feat  was  that  of  James  Nayler  and  his  pro¬ 
cession  which  we  saw  at  Bristol  lately.  Interminable  debates 
about  James  ISTayler, — excelling  in  stupor  all  the  human  speech, 
even  in  English  parliaments,  this  Editor  has  ever  been  exposed  to. 
ISTayler,  in  fact,  is  almost  all  that  survives  with  one,  from  Burton, 
as  the  sum  of  what  this  parliament  did.  If  they  did  aught  else, 
the  human  mind,  eager  enough  to  carry  off  news  of  them,  has  mostly 
dropt  it  on  the  way  hither.  To  posterity  they  sit  there  as  the 
James  Nayler  parliament.  Four  hundred  gentlemen  of  England, 
and  I  think  a  sprinkling  of  lords  among  them,  assembled  from  all 
counties  and  boroughs  of  the  three  nations,  to  sit  in  solemn  debate 
on  this  terrific  phenomenon  :  a  mad  Quaker  fancying  or  seeming  to 
fancy  himself,  what  is  not  uncommon  since,  a  new  incarnation  of 
Christ.  Shall  we  hang  him,  shall  we  whip  him,  bore  the  tongue  of 
him  with  hot  iron ;  shall  we  imprison  him,  set  him  to  oakum ; 


293 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 

shall  we  roast,  or  boil,  or  stew  him  ; — shall  we  put  the  question 
whether  this  question  shall  be  put ;  debate  whether  this  shall  be 
debated  ;  in  Heaven’s  name,  what  shall  we  do  with  him,  the  terrific 
phenomenon  of  Nayler  1  This  is  the  history  of  Oliver’s  second 
parliament  for  three  long  months  and  odd.  Nowhere  does  the 
un fathomable  deep  of  dulness  which  our  English  character  has  in 
it  more  stupendously  disclose  itself.  Something  almost  grand  in  it ; 
nay,  something  really  grand,  though  in  our  impatience  we  call 
it  ‘  dull.’  They  hold  by  use  and  wont,  these  honourable  gentle¬ 
men,  almost  as  by  laws  of  nature, — by  second  nature  almost  as  by 
first  nature.  Pious  too  ;  and  would  fain  know  rightly  the  way  to 
new  objects  by  the  old  roads,  without  trespass.  Not  insignificant 
this  English  character,  which  can  placidly  debate  such  matters,  and 
even  feel  a  certain  smack  of  delight  in  them  !  A  massiveness  of 
eupeptic  vigour  speaks  itself  there,  which  perhaps  the  liveliest  wit 
might  envy.  Who  is  there  that  has  the  strength  of  ten  oxen,  that 
is  able  to  support  these  things'?  Couldst  thou  debate  on  Nayler, 
day  after  day,  for  a  whole  winter  1  Thou,  if  the  sky  were  threat¬ 
ening  to  fall  on  account  of  it,  wouldst  sink  under  such  labour,  ap¬ 
pointed  only  for  the  oxen  of  the  gods  ! — The  honourable  gentlemen 
set  Nayler  to  ride  with  his  face  to  the  tail,  through  various  streets 
and  cities,  to  be  whipt  (poor  Nayler),  to  be  branded,  to  be  bored 
through  the  tongue,  and  then  to  do  oakum  ad  libitum  upon  bread 
and  water ;  after  which  he  repented,  confessed  himself  mad,  and 
this  world-great  phenomenon,  visible  to  posterity  and  the  West  of 
England,  was  got  winded  up.” — Yol.  ii.  pp.  487,  488. 

Such  were  Cromwell’s  Parliaments.  He  met  their  obsti¬ 
nacy  by  simple  absolutism.  He  treated  them  like  nine-pins. 
He  excluded,  he  admitted  what  members  he  liked,  while  they 
sat ;  and  when  those  expedients  proved  ineffective,  he  dissolved 
them.  The  definition  of  a  parliament,  under  Cromwell,  made 
it  a  ver}^  flexible  assembly.  A  parliament  there  must  be  for 
the  sake  of  the  constitutional  show,  and  the  satisfaction  of  the 
nation  at  large.  But  a  parliament  only  meant  in  reality  that 
company  of  gentlemen  whom  the  Protector  allowed  to  meet  in 
a  room  at  Westminster.  A  hundred  members  in  a  body  were 
shut  out  at  a  Parliament’s  opening  :  dozens  at  a  time  were 
seized  and  packed  off  into  the  country  during  a  session.  The 
Lord  Protector’s  certificates  admitted  to  the  House  ;  and  those 
members  who  were  without  them  looked,  on  their  arrival,  on 
impenetrable  officials.  A  guard  of  musketeers  attended,  after 


294 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


unpleasant  debates,  for  the  purgation  of  the  assembly  ;  and  the 
circulation  of  a  paper  for  the  subscription  of  the  members  was 
a  sign  for  scrupulous  consciences  to  withdraw.  “  You  are  here 
met  this  day  a  free  Parliament/’  he  tells  them,  “  God  be  blessed  : 
I  say  a  free  Parliament.”  But  eight  days  after  the  delivery  of 
this  speech,  the  members  of  this  free  assembly  saw  the  doors 
of  the  House  closed,  and  a  document  awaiting  their  signature 
previous  to  readmittance ;  at  the  sight  of  which  the  republi¬ 
cans  retired  sullenly  to  their  country  seats ;  “  My  Lord  Pro¬ 
tector  molesting  no  man  for  his  recusancy,  indeed  taking  their 
absence  as  a  comparative  favour  of  the  parties.” 

Cromwell’s  speeches  form  another  portion  of  his  Parlia¬ 
mentary  tactics,  and  deserve  consideration.  Cromwell’s 
speeches  are  significant  reflections  of  himself.  We  hear  that 
the  Lord  Protector  on  such  a  day  made  “  a  large  and  subtle 
speech.”  Large  and  subtle  they  certainly  are,  rather  than 
intelligible.  Such  a  rolling,  slippery  colluvies  of  words  never 
came  from  the  mouth  of  mortal,  as  one  of  Cromwell’s  speeches. 
It  is  a  torture  to  read  one.  The  principle  he  goes  upon  is  never 
to  say  anything  out.  He  says  nothing.  He  hints  at,  alludes 
to,  overshadows,  hovers  over  a  variety  of  subjects.  We  have 
only  a  dark  presentiment  of  some  approaching  subject-matter ; 
a  vague  impression  that  there  is  somewhere  or  other,  in  the 
metaphysical  universe,  the  thing  to  which  his  words  have  their 
reference.  A  sulphureous  cloud  broods  over  the  ground ; 
fuliginous  vapours  float ;  the  air  curls  round  and  round,  in 
dizzying  waves ;  wreaths  of  smoke  entwine  us  ;  we  hardly 
know  where  we  are,  and  feel  ourselves  intellectually  sea-sick 
and  reeling.  Cromwell  allowed  his  politic  fear  of  straightfor¬ 
wardness  to  become  a  real  mental  disease.  He  could  not  get 
himself  to  say  anything  openly  :  the  constant  habit  of  hinting 
and  alluding,  of  being  vague,  and  hitting  sideways,  grew  into  a 
second  nature  ;  and  he  seems,  from  the  physical  constitution  of 
his  mind,  unable  to  confront  or  look  in  the  face  as  a  speaker. 
In  acts  straightforward,  when  he  pleased,  he  sets  himself  afloat 
in  the  element  of  language,  as  if  it  were  a  native  medium  of 
obliquity.  Vanishing  sentences,  buried  constructions,  begin¬ 
nings  unended,  endings  unbegun,  parentheses  within  paren- 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell 


295 


theses,  allusions  to  generalisations,  and  a  dissolving  series  of 
unseen  backgrounds,  comprise  a  speech  of  the  Protector’s. 
We  wander  over  a  morass,  and  there  is  nothing  to  catch  the  eye  ; 
we  are  slipping  and  sliding,  and  there  is  nothing  to  lay  hold  of. 
Cromwell’s  mind,  like  a  dark  whirlpool,  with  back-stream,  and 
undercurrents,  mixed,  takes  in  the  subject-matter  of  a  speech,  and 
rolls  it  beneath  the  surface.  It  may  rise  for  a  moment,  but  the 
stream  immediately  carries  it  under  again.  Has  any  one  of  our 
readers  ever  had  the  curiosity,  at  a  wild-beast  show,  to  give  a 
pebble  to  a  rhinoceros  ?  His  large  fleshy  jaws  take  it  in,  and  work 
it  from  side  to  side  with  a  heavy  seesaw  motion  ;  the  stone  just 
makes  its  appearance  near  the  lip,  and  then  an  immediate 
sweep  of  the  large  tongue  engulfs  it  in  the  recesses  of  a 
cavernous  mouth.  The  subject  of  one  of  Cromwell’s  speeches 
fares  much  in  the  same  way.  He  rolls  it,  buried  underneath 
his  tongue,  from  side  to  side,  sometimes  just  showing  a  comer 
of  it,  and  then  covering  it  again.  An  interminable  rolling 
motion  goes  on ;  and  the  wide  jaws  move  before  the  solemn 
assembly  for  their  appointed  time.  With  large  quotation  of 
Scripture,  and  reference  to  chapter  and  verse  ;  with  endless 
allusion  to  “  Providences,”  “  Mercies,  “  Deliverances,”  “  Dispen¬ 
sations,”  “  Witnessing^  ;  ”  with  proofs  from  the  Psalms,  the 
Prophets,  the  Epistles ;  with  sentimental  allusions  to  his  own 
grief  at  being  compelled  to  bear  the  burden  of  power ;  with 
long  parentheses  about  no  ascertainable  subject-matter ;  with 
the  heaving,  swaying  movements  and  the  inarticulate  rumbling 
noises  of  a  bituminous,  volcanic  lake ;  he  comes  at  last  to  a 
conclusion,  quite  clear,  and  level  to  the  plainest  capacities — 
“  Mr.  Speaker,  I  do  dissolve  this  Parliament.” 

Mr.  Carlyle,  who  attends  the  Protector  faithfully  through¬ 
out  his  speeches,  with  bracketed  explanatory  interjections, 
applauding  and  encouraging  him  ;  does  not  disguise  the  disgust 
and  weariness  which  he  has  had  in  the  task  of  editing  them. 
Out  of  the  original  “  coagulated  nonsense,  and  buckwashing,” 
however,  he  flatters  himself  he  has  educed  something  readable 
and  clear.  We  cannot  congratulate  him  on  the  issue  of  his 
labours.  Indeed  his  own  view  is  not  sanguine  at  times.  He 
gives  us  hopes  that  “  if  we  search  well,  we  may,  after  ten  or 


296 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


twenty  perusals,”  find  a  meaning.  And  lie  adds,  “  My  reader 
must  be  patient,  thankful  for  mere  dulness  ;  thankful  that  it 
is  not  madness  over  and  above.”  We  do  not  quite  see  the  claim 
on  our  gratitude.  At  least  we  have  a  large  debt  to  pay  to 
many  other  remains  of  oratory  before  we  can  be  grateful  to  a 
speaker  on  such  very  negative  grounds.  Mr.  Carlyle  attributes 
the  intricacy  of  Cromwell’s  speeches  to  bad  editorship  :  but  he 
must  see  that  is  a  weak  explanation.  How  could  simple 
bad  editorship  ever  have  created  such  an  original  and  grotesque 
world  of  confusion  as  they  present  ?  And  why  are  not  the 
other  speeches  of  the  day  as  badly  edited  as  Cromwell’s  ? 

Thus  dragooning  his  Parliaments,  and  tired  and  vexed  by 
them,  Cromwell  nevertheless  enjoyed  their  solid  support 
against  the  religious  democracy  of  the  army  and  its  offshoots  ; 
and  their  constitutionalism  supplied  a  conservative  basis,  of 
which  he  had  the  advantage.  Parliament  only  wanted  to  bring 
his  power  into  constitutional  form  and  shape,  and  deprive  it  of 
that  formidable  indefiniteness  which  at  present  attached  to  it. 
But  it  was  favourable  to  Cromwell’s  continuance  in  power. 
This  divided  feeling  in  Parliament  on  the  one  side,  aided  by 
Cromwell’s  own  coquetries  and  secret  wishes  on  the  other, 
issued  at  length  in  an  important  act.  After  four  years  of 
collision  with  him  as  Protector,  in  March  1657,  the  House 
changed  its  tactics,  and  made  the  formal  offer  of  the  English 
Crown  to  Cromwell. 

Cromwell  had  now  a  difficult  game  to  play,  and  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life  did  not  see  his  way  clearly.  He  saw  argu¬ 
ments  pro  and  con.,  and  felt  inclination  struggling  with  policy. 
He  liked  the  offer.  That  is  quite  certain.  He  had  had  his 
eye  on  the  crown  for  a  long  time.  Mr.  Carlyle  throws  a  doubt 
indeed  over  this  latter  fact,  but  it  is  a  wholly  gratuitous  one. 
A  wish,  with  Mr.  Carlyle,  has  very  creative  and  very  anni¬ 
hilating  functions.  It  not  seldom  makes  a  fact ;  it  not  seldom 
undoes  one.  In  the  case  of  an  unfavourable  fact,  there  is  no 
amount  of  evidence,  be  it  ever  so  clear,  substantial,  and  unsus¬ 
picious,  which  he  does  not  think  himself  justified  in  totally 
contradicting,  because  he  simply  wishes  to  do  so.  If  an  author 
dares  to  record  it,  he  calls  him  a  nickname,  and  dismisses  him. 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


297 


He  does  this  on  the  present  occasion.  Whitlocke  records  the 
fact  that  on  or  about  the  7th  of  November  1652,  that  is,  five 
years  before  the  present  time,  and  immediately  after  Crom¬ 
well’s  return  from  the  Scotch  war,  he  had  a  conversation  with 
Cromwell,  in  the  course  of  which  this  subject  came  up  ;  and 
he  records  it  in  conversational  form.  We  will  dip  into  the 
middle  of  it.  “  Cromwell. — What  if  a  man  should  take  upon 
him  to  be  a  king  ?  Whitlocke. — I  think  that  remedy  would  be 
worse  than  the  disease.  Cromwell. — Why  do  you  think  so  ? 
Whitlocke. — As  to  your  own  person  the  title  of  king  would  be 
of  no  advantage,  because  you  have  the  full  kingly  power  in 
you  already,  concerning  the  militia  as  you  are  General :  as  to 
nomination  of  civil  officers,  because  those  men  you  think 
fittest  are  seldom  refused.  Cromwell. — I  have  heard  some  of 
your  profession  observe  that  he  who  is  actually  a  king,  whether 
by  election  or  descent,  yet  being  once  a  king,  all  acts  done  by 
him  are  lawful  and  justifiable,  as  by  any  king  who  hath  the 
crown  by  inheritance  from  his  forefathers  :  and  that  by  an  Act 
of  Parliament  in  Henry  vnth’s  time,  it  is  safer  for  those  who 
act  under  a  king  (be  his  title  what  it  will)  than  for  those 
who  act  under  any  other  power.”  And  so  the  conversation 
goes  on,  Whitlocke  taking  the  dissuasive  throughout.  Mr. 
Carlyle  dismisses  this  plain  testimony  thu$, — “  Learned  Bul- 
strode’s  (Bulstrode  Whitlocke’s)  dramaturgy  shall  not  be 
excerpted  by  us  here.”  Now  we  can  discover  no  appearance 
of  dramaturgy  in  Whitlocke’s  report.  He  gives  it  in  legal 
accurate  language,  as  a  lawyer  would  report  a  conversation,  but 
there  is  no  more  colour  thrown  over  it  than  what  the  stiff 
medium  of  such  a  legal  mind  would  give.  The  report  is  dry, 
solemn,  and  methodical,  but  entirely  without  scenic  effort  or 
display.  Whitlocke  has  an  established  position  as  an  historical 
authority,  and  Mr.  Carlyle  himself  constantly  uses  him.  O11 
this  particular  occasion,  however,  “  Bulstrode  is  dramaturgic  ;  ” 
and  he  will  not  “  excerpt  ”  his  testimony.  The  only  remark 
we  need  make  on  such  historical  tactics  is  that,  whether  he 
excerpts  it  or  not,  the  passage  is  in  Whitlocke. 

Cromwell  had  had  an  indefinite  eye  to  the  crown  all  along  ; 
and  now  that  it  was  brought  near,  he  looked  wistfully  and 


298  Carlyles  Cromwell. 

longingly  at  it.  But  the  offer  had  its  suspicious  side.  It  came 
from  jealous  constitutionalists,  and  carried  with  it  its  shackles 
as  well  as  its  pomp.  The  title  of  King  was  in  fact  a  more 
limitable  and  manageable  one  than  that  of  Protector  ;  in  so  far 
as  the  former  was  within  reach  of  English  law,  the  latter  was 
outside  of  it.  A  new  name  had  no  ties  upon  it :  an  old  one 
had ;  and  Parliament  could  struggle  to  more  advantage  with  a 
definite  than  with  an  indefinite  power.  While  Cromwell  then 
adroitly  used  the  constitutional  jealousy  of  an  English  Parlia¬ 
ment  to  change  his  Protectorate  into  Eoyalty,  he  half  suspected 
the  result  of  his  own  skill  and  kept  guard  upon  his  own 
strategics.  The  democratical  feelings  of  the  army  however 
furnished  the  chief  objection.  The  army  hated  the  name  of 
king,  and,  deprived  of  their  support,  he  would  be  at  the  mercy 
of  Parliament,  and  perhaps  only  revive  a  name  to  awaken  the 
old  feelings  of  the  nation  at  large,  and  give  an  advantage  to 
the  Pmyalists.  So  stood  the  offer.  Parliament  with  melli¬ 
fluous  complimentary  speeches,  but  a  latent  wish  to  enfeeble 
the  strong  man,  held  out  the  glittering  symbol ;  Cromwell 
liked  the  glitter,  but  not  the  risk ;  and  power  and  office 
struggled  in  him.  He  would  be  stately  as  King  :  he  is  strong 
as  Protector.  He  was  fairly  divided,  and  could  not  make  up 
his  mind.  And  the  trembling  balance,  the  wistful  glance,  and 
the  alternations  of  political  coquetry,  were  only  steadied  by  the 
determined  resolution  to  make,  whether  he  accepted  the 
crown  or  not,  as  much  out  of  the  fact  of  it  being  offered 
him  as  it  could  possibly  bear. 

The  “  large  and  subtle”  tongue  was  now  brought  into 
egregious  operation.  Cromwell’s  speeches  on  this  occasion 
exceed  themselves.  On  the  31st  of  March,  after  a  formal 
visit  from  the  Commons,  with  Speaker  Widdrington  at  their  head, 
at  the  Banqueting-House,  Whitehall,  to  present  their  “  petition 
and  advice,  engrossed  in  vellum,  with  the  title  of  King  recom¬ 
mended  in  it,”  a  Committee  of  ninety- nine  was  appointed,  and 
a  series  of  conferences  commenced.  The  Committee  of  ninety- 
nine  attended  on  him  in  three  days’  time,  afterwards  in  the 
Banqueting-House,  anxious  to  hear  his  determination.  The 
mighty  tongue  performed  its  evolutions,  licked  deliberately 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


299 


all  their  solemn  faces  round,  and  dismissed  them.  A  week 
afterwards  they  attended  again,  with  the  same  result.  The 
same  scene  and  process  were  repeated  after  an  interval  of  two 
days.  A  fourth,  a  fifth,  a  sixth  time  successively,  Speaker 
Widdrington  and  the  Committee  of  ninety-nine  attend  in  the 
Banqueting-House  with  expectant  looks.  On  each  occasion  the 
Committee  retires  well  smeared  and  bedaubed  with  a  dark 
ambiguous  and  utterly  impenetrable  speech.  Cromwell  oscil¬ 
lates  from  Crown  to  Protectorate,  from  Protectorate  to  Crown, 
with  such  slipperiness  and  irresolution  that  it  is  impossible  to 
tell  which  of  the  two  even  his  alternation  is  alternating  to. 
His  oscillations  themselves  oscillate ;  he  intertwines  his  alter¬ 
natives  :  lie  slides  from  one  to  another  imperceptibly  like 
subtle  fluid,  and  seems  to  inhabit  throughout  both  hypotheses 
at  once. 

The  most  solemn  of  these  interviews  is  one  in  which  a 
formal  dialogue  takes  place  between  the  Protector  and  the  legal 
grandees  of  the  Committee.  “Who  shall  begin?’5  says  Mr. 
Carlyle.  “  His  Highness  wishes  much  they  would  begin  ;  and 
in  a  delicate  way  urges,  and  again  urges  them  to  do  so.55  Crom¬ 
well,  i.e.,  wants  to  be  pressed  ;  and  invites  invitation.  The  affair 
is  of  the  nature  “  of  a  courtship  ;  and  the  young  lady  cannot 
answer  on  the  first  blush  of  the  business  : 55  she  waits  to  be  asked 
again  and  again  ;  and  modestly  evades  till  the  pressure  becomes 
high  enough.  The  Committee  having  been  made  properly 
urgent,  Cromwell’s  replies  roll  in.  He  “  is  never  willing  to 
deny  those  things  that  come  from  Parliament  to  the  Supreme 
Magistrate.”  He  “  thinks  it  a  very  singular  favour  and  honour 
done  to  him.”  He  “  cannot  take  upon  himself  to  refel  their 
grounds ;  they  are  so  strong  and  rational.”  “  The  title  of 
King,  he  confesses,  is  interwoven  with  the  fundamental  law  of 
the  realm.”  But  “  are  these  necessary  grounds  ? 55  Kingship 
indeed  “  was  more  than  a  name  :  ”  yet  a  name  it  was  :  there 
might  be  the  supreme  power  under  another  name.  However, 
“  he  had  rather  have  any  name  from  this  Parliament  than  any 
other  name  without  it.”  And  though  the  name  of  King  had 
been  defiled  with  Stewart  associations,  and  should  therefore  be 
hated  as  the  garment  spotted  by  the  flesh,  he  adds,  “  he  be- 


300 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


sought  them  not  to  suppose  that  he  brought  that  as  an  argu¬ 
ment  to  prove  anything.”  Underneath  this  coquetry  with  the 
throne,  he  took  care  to  strengthen  the  Protectorship.  He  re¬ 
minded  them  of  a  certain  “  argument  of  experience”  which 
amidst  all  the  disadvantages  of  the  name  the  latter  had.  “  It  is 
a  short  one,  but  it  is  a  true  one,  under  favour  :  and  is  known 
to  all  of  you  in  the  fact  of  it  (under  favour)  :  that  the  supreme 
authority  going  under  another  name,  hath  been  already  twice 
complied  with  !  Twice  under  the  Gustodes  Libertatis  Anglice. 
And  truly  I  may  say  that  almost  universal  obedience  hath 
been  given  by  all  ranks  and  sorts  of  men  to  it.”  He  duly 
impresses  upon  the  Committee  the  fact,  that  their  offer  of  the 
kingly  name  commits  them  to  the  admission  that  he  had 
already  the  reality  ;  and  that  only  a  verbal  difference  was  in¬ 
volved  in  the  present  dispute.  Thus  playing  with  the  title, 
and  grasping  the  substance  more  tightly  ;  eyeing  the  crown,  and 
riveting  the  Protectorate,  he  “  could  give  no  other  than  this 
poor  account  of  himself,”  day  after  day,  till  the  trembling 
balance  at  last  decided  against  the  title — for  this  time.  “  The 
Protector,”  says  Whitlocke,  “  was  satisfied  in  his  private  judg¬ 
ment  that  it  was  fit  for  him  to  accept  this  title  of  King,  and 
matters  were  prepared  in  order  thereunto.  But  afterwards, 
by  solicitation,  representation,  and  even  denunciation  from 
the  Commonwealth’s-men  and  many  officers  of  the  army,  he 
decided  to  attend  some  better  season  and  opportunity  in  the 
business,  and  refused  at  this  time.” 

We  have  to  remark  on  Mr.  Carlyle’s  mode  of  treating  this 
transaction.  He  is  obliged  fairly  to  give  up  his  hero  in  it,  and 
laugh  at  him.  But  he  will  not  say  that  he  is  laughing.  His 
usual  tone  about  Cromwell  goes  on  :  only  he  laughs  too.  And 
the  biographer,  equally  tender  to  himself  and  to  his  hero,  en¬ 
deavours  to  save  his  own  credit  for  shrewdness  and  his  hero’s 
greatness  too  by  a  critical  addition  made  but  not  acknowledged. 
A  most  grotesque  mixture  is  the  result.  He  exposes  Cromwell, 
and  shields  him  at  once ;  applauds  and  sneers :  takes  care  to 
show  that  he  sees  through  him,  and  worships  him  as  if  he  were 
quite  innocent  of  seeing  anything  all  the  time.  This  is  not 
straightforward.  When  a  biographer  is  obliged  to  alter  his 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell 


301 


tone,  he  ought  to  do  it  avowedly,  and  give  his  reason.  The 
laugh  at  and  adoration  of  the  same  person  at  the  same  time 
compose  a  hollow  compound,  the  discordant  ingredients  in 
which  must  he  detected  immediately  by  a  reader  s  taste.  And 
transcendental  admiration  and  sympathy  have  a  palpably  and 
obtrusively  uncongenial  accompaniment  in  such  a  running 
comment  as  Mr.  Carlyle’s — a  broken  stream  of  slang  which 
appears  to  be  proceeding  from  a  wild -beast  show  keeper, 
showing  off  the  peculiarities  and  eccentricities  of  his  favourite 
animal  with  more  of  hilarity  than  reverence :  a  comment 
which  gives  us  at  intervals  critical  announcements,  such  as 
“  clearing  his  throat  to  get  under  way,”  “  Sentence  breaks 
down,”  “  His  Highness  is  plunging  in  deep  brakes  and  im¬ 
broglios  ironical  laughter — “  Draw  me  out,”  “  I  understood 
I  was  the  young  lady,”  “  The  young  lady  will  and  she  will  not;” 
“Young  lady  now  flings  a  little  weight  into  the  other  scale:” 
adoration  and  encouragement  going  on  all  the  while,  “ah!” 
“well!”  “yes,  your  Highness!”  “Hear  his  Highness!”  “Poor 
Sovereign  man  !” 

Such  is  the  picture  which  Cromwell’s  Protectorate  presents  ; 
a  picture  of  a  powerful  and  subtle  mind  at  a  stand-still,  unable 
to  subdue  the  material  it  had  to  subdue.  Cromwell  could  not 
bring  the  nation  into  order :  it  got  the  better  of  him ;  it  would 
go  on  in  its  own  way.  That  he  would  have  been  an  efficient 
governor,  if  he  could  once  have  got  the  country  with  him,  we 
do  not  doubt :  but  he  could  not  do  that.  He  was  a  successful 
governor  prospectively,  and  hypothetically,  not  actually.  Given 
the  national  position,  he  would  carry  it  out ;  but  he  could  not 
get  the  position.  His  administration,  as  it  was,  was  successful 
as  an  executive,  and  as  an  executive  only  :  where  he  had  his  own 
way  he  managed  well ;  he  mastered  the  mechanism  of  govern¬ 
ment,  but  he  could  not  get  possession  of  men’s  hearts  or  minds. 
The  sphere  of  national  sympathy  was  one  above  him.  He  had 
formed  his  own  powerful  army  clique ;  he  gained  the  executive 
of  the  country  by  means  of  that  clique ;  and  once  in  possession 
of  the  executive  he  ruled  by  its  simple  force.  This  was  a  won¬ 
derful  exhibition  of  strength ;  but  an  exhibition  of  strength  it 
was  :  he  could  force,  he  could  not  win  men.  His  Protectorate 


302 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell 


thus  presents  a  succession  of  acts  of  summary  but  impotent 
despotism.  He  could  do  nothing  with  his  constitutionalising 
Parliaments  but  dissolve  them ;  and  that  had  no  effect  beyond 
the  moment.  He  dissolved,  he  reassembled,  he  dissolved,  he 
reassembled  again  :  all  in  vain.  He  had  the  physical  power  of 
motion,  and  that  was  all :  and  he  could  transfer  bodies  out  of 
the  house,  but  could  not  control  minds  in  it.  The  stiff  repub¬ 
licanism  of  the  army,  which  he  half  led  and  half  bowed  to,  was 
equally  unmanageable.  Old  comrades  could  not  bear  him,  and 
would  not  be  coaxed.  The  fierce  Fifth-Monarchy  spirit  was 
equally  unmanageable.  Cromwell  benefited  largely  by  his 
middle  and  comprehensive  policy ;  and  he  suffered  too.  If  he 
had  got  some  hold  over  all  parties,  he  had  entire  hold  over 
none  :  and  if  he  had  forestalled  antagonists  he  had  weakened 
friends.  He  was  nobody’s  idol.  He  had  committed  himself  to 
no  party,  and  no  party  loved  him :  and  the  deference  which 
each*  side  paid  to  a  power  resulting  from  a  connection  with  all 
sides,  was  a  cold  and  reluctant  one.  Moreover,  the  loyalty  of 
the  nation  at  large  had  been  only  buried  by  late  events,  and 
not  extinguished ;  the  Eoyalist  party  was  strong,  though  dor¬ 
mant,  in  the  country;  and  the  body  of  “Neutrals  and  those 
who  had  deserted  the  cause,”  as  Cromwell  calls  those  who  had 
become  tired  of  the  rebellion  and  wanted  the  old  family  back 
again,  was  so  great,  that  it  was  necessary  by  the  enactment  of 
stringent  “  qualifications  ”  to  exclude  them  positively  from  all 
share  in  the  representation  of  the  country,  and  keep  them 
down  by  literal  Act  of  Parliament.  A  freely  chosen  Parlia¬ 
ment,  one  sent  up  by  a  constituency  to  which  no  excluding 
“  qualifications  ”  were  applied,  the  Protector  boldly  confesses 
in  one  of  his  speeches,  “  would  have  delivered  their  cause  into 
the  hands  of  those  who  had  deserted  them,  and  were  as 
neuters would  have  set  a  Eoyalist  party  “in  the  saddle;” 
would  have  caused  “  all  the  power  to  come  into  the  hands  of 
those  who  had  very  little  affection  ”  for  him ;  and  “  delivered 
the  liberties  of  the  nation  into  the  hands  of  those  who  had  never 
fought  for  them.”  He  confessed,  i.e.  that  the  nation  at  large, 
if  it  had  been  allowed  to  speak  for  itself,  would  have  decided 
against  the  Eevolutionists ;  that  it  had  to  be  fairly  coerced  into 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


303 

its  new  liberties ;  and  that  if  it  could,  it  would  have  sent  up  a 
Royalist  Parliament.  The  nation  had  to  be  coerced  then,  and 
it  was  coerced.  An  iron  insulated  executive  kept  the  country 
down 'by  its  official  machinery  and  its  standing  army:  it  al¬ 
lowed  neither  Parliament  nor  people  to  speak ;  and  existed  by 
pure  force  amid  a  nation  which  it  could  not  convert  or  reconcile. 
It  had  an  artificial  position  which  was  sure  to  go  when  Crom¬ 
well  went.  So  far  from  the  Restoration  being  an  artificial 
movement,  its  postponement  was  artificial.  The  nation  was 
ready  and  waiting ;  and  slid  into  it  naturally  as  soon  as  Crom¬ 
well  had  gone,  but  he  stopped  it  now.  The  will  which  had 
forced  a  rebellious  position  upon  the  nation  sustained  it  against 
the  nation,  and  by  one  huge  continuous  effort  kept  off  the 
inevitable  reaction.  But  it  was  an  effort,  and  it  was  a  struggle 
with  the  natural  course  of  events.  Cromwell’s  government 
was  one  working  against  the  grain  ;  a  succession  of  jars, 
collisions,  sudden  checks,  and  dead  locks  ;  gagging  all  wills, 
gaining  none ;  silencing  opponents,  and  not  establishing 
itself. 

The  reader  has  now  a  rough  outline  of  Cromwell’s  career 
before  him ;  it  remains  to  draw  the  conclusion  from  it,  and  form 
a  judgment  of  the  man.  We  are  aware  we  have  anticipated 
this  judgment  in  remarks  that  we  have  at  times  made.  It  is 
quite  impossible  indeed  for  any  one  who  uses  the  recognised 
historical  language  about  Cromwell  not  to  judge  him  in  the  act 
of  describing  him  ;  for  history  has  passed  its  sentence.  Never¬ 
theless  we  wish  to  regard  the  facts  before  us  as  much  as  pos¬ 
sible  as  simple  data,  and  no  more. 

Mr.  Carlyle  has  a  very  simple  answer  to  the  question, 
whether  Cromwell  was  a  hypocrite  or  not ;  one  much  more 
simple,  in  our  opinion,  than  acute.  He  has  the  most  un¬ 
bounded,  impetuous,  jubilant  confidence  in  him  ;  he  enjoys  the 
undisturbed  luxury  of  infantine  security  and  primeval  faith, 
with  respect  to  his  biographical  subject-matter.  Whatever 
Cromwell  does  is  great,  pure,  splendid  ;  if  Cromwell  does  it 
that  is  enough  :  it  springs  from  the  depths  and  the  eternities  : 
not  a  breath  must  be  heard,  not  a  look  endured,  against  it. 
Whatever  Cromwell  has  done,  is  doing,  or  may  be  about  to  do, 


304 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell 


must  all  be  submissively  swallowed ;  and  the  reader  must  have 
a  positive  belief  in  him,  as  if  he  were  some  divine  principle 
out  of  which  nothing  but  what  was  admirable  could  proceed. 
Whatever  shape  it  assumes,  the  divine  reality  is  the  same ;  and 
all  the  issues  of  the  ever-involving  problem  simply  present 
themselves  to  be  admitted,  upon  a  law  of  mathematical  neces¬ 
sity.  The  biographer  attends  obsequiously  on  his  hero,  and 
changes  as  he  changes.  When  Cromwell  thought  a  thing,  it 
was  right;  when  he  ceases  to  think  it,  it  is  not  right.  Mr. 
Carlyle  has  an  unqualified  contempt  for  ceremonial  so  long  as 
Cromwell  is  a  plain  republican ;  but  when  Cromwell  has  state 
coaches,  life-guards,  lacqueys,  and  pages,  Mr.  Carlyle  has  then 
a  word  to  say  for  “  due  ceremonial  and  decent  observance.”  A 
dirty  shirt  was  heroic  when  Cromwell  wore  one  :  a  gold  hat¬ 
band  and  velvet  are  not  unheroic  when  Cromwell  becomes  a 
neat  dresser.  Revolutionism  was  exalted  when  Cromwell  was 
empty;  when  Cromwell  is  satisfied,  revolution  has  done  enough. 
He  is  fierce  and  destructive  with  Cromwell :  he  talks  very 
respectable  conservatism  with  Cromwell  too.  The  Calvinistic 
fury  of  army  independency  was  heroic,  while  it  was  raising 
Cromwell ;  but  when  Cromwell  has  to  turn  from  his  elevation 
upon  his  elevators,  and  put  his  Calvinistic  friends  in  jail,  Mr. 
Carlyle  performs  the  office  of  constable  upon  them.  The  re¬ 
ligious  enthusiasm  of  a  former  stage  is  the  “  Anabaptist  Sans- 
culottism”  of  a  later;  and  the  “lightning  and  splendour”  of 
the  army  preacher  becomes  fuliginous,  sooty,  and  smoky  as 
soon  as  it  darts  upon  the  Protector.  He  does  not  explain  these 
variations :  the  one  fact  of  Cromwell  explains  all.  With  an 
overbearing  and  somewhat  childish  exultation  he  brandishes 
his  fact ;  he  thrusts  his  idol  on  our  captured  worship ;  he 
glories  in  a  bravo  demonstration  of  force,  and  rides  triumphantly 
in  the  wake  of  the  great  man  to  whom  he  has  appended  him¬ 
self.  He  attaches  himself  to  his  hero  like  an  affectionate  but 
unreasoning  animal.  And  Cromwell’s  dog,  if  the  Lord  Pro¬ 
tector  kept  such  a  companion,  never  looked  in  his  face  more 
wistfully,  or  licked  his  hands  more  confidingly,  or  gambolled 
about  him  more  exuberantly,  than  his  biographer  in  mind  does. 
He  will  hear  no  inferences,  believe  no  facts,  against  his  hero  : 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


305 


lie  will  not  say  why  he  will  not  hear  and  why  he  will  not 
believe.  He  has  no  reason.  He  is  contented,  he  rejoices,  he 
is  delighted  at  having  none.  He  is  pirnid  of  being  unreasonable, 
and  having  the  0.  C.  instinct  pure  and  unalloyed  within  him. 
Such  is  Mr.  Carlyle’s  treatment  of  the  question  of  Cromwell’s 
character. 

Further,  he  does  this  upon  a  principle.  He  has  a  theory 
on  the  subject  of  great  men,  the  benefit  of  which  he  appears 
to  allow  to  all  who  can  claim  that  character.  He  says 

we  have  no  right  to  be  suspicious.  “  The  vulpine  sharpness 
which  considers  itself  to  be  knowledge,  and  detects,  is  mis¬ 
taken.”  Great  men  must  be  trusted.  It  is  ungenerous  to 
suppose  that  they  act  upon  inferior  motives.  For  example  : 
Cromwell  is  generally  thought  to  have  been  influenced  by  a 
love  of  power;  and  there  are  signs  about  him  to  common 
eyes  positively  demonstrative  of  that  motive,  Mr.  Carlyle 
takes  immediately  the  high  ground  with  this  suspicion,  and 
asks,  with  lofty  simplicity,  how  such  a  man  as  Cromwell 
could  love  power  ?  Flunkeys  and  valets  love  power  in¬ 
deed,  but  Cromwell  had  far  too  deep,  too  genuine  a 

mind  to  care  for  so  poor  a  thing.  “  Your  Cromwell, 

what  good  could  it  do  him  to  be  noticed  by  noisy  crowds  of 
people  ?  God,  his  maker,  already  noticed  him.  He,  Cromwell, 
was  already  there ;  no  notice  could  make  him  other  than  he 
already  was.  Till  his  hair  was  grown  grey,  and  life  from  the 
down-hill  slope  was  all  soon  to  be  limited,  not  infinite  but 
finite,  and  all  a  measurable  matter  how  it  went — he  had  been 
content  to  plough  the  ground  and  read  his  Bible.  He,  in  his 
old  days,  could  not  support  it  any  longer  without  selling 
himself  to  falsehood,  that  he  might  ride  in  gilt  carriages  to 
Whitehall,  and  have  clerks  with  gilt-  papers  haunting  him, 

‘  Decide  this,  decide  that,’  which  in  utmost  sorrow  of  heart  no 
man  can  perfectly  decide  !  What  could  gilt  carriages  do  for 
this  man  ?  From  of  old  was  there  not  in  his  life  a  weight 
of  meaning,  a  terror  and  a  splendour,  as  of  heaven  itself  ?  Flis 
existence  there  as  a  man,  set  him  beyond  the  need  of  gilding. 
Death,  judgment,  and  eternity  :  these  already  lay  as  the  back¬ 
ground  of  whatsoever  he  thought,  or  did.  All  his  life  lay 

M.E.-I.]  XJ 


306  Carlyle  s  Cromwell . 

begirt,  as  in  a  sea  of  nameless  thoughts,  which  no  speech  of  a 
mortal  could  name.  God’s  Word,  as  the  puritan  prophets  of 
that  time  had  read  it :  this  was  great,  and  all  else  was  little  to 
him.  To  call  such  a  man  ‘  ambitious,’  to  figure  him  as  the 
prurient  windbag  above  described,  seems  to  be  the  poorest 
solecism.  Such  a  man  will  say,  ‘  Keep  your  gilt  carriages  and 
huzzaing  mobs,  keep  your  red-tape  clerks,  your  influentialities, 
your  important  businesses.  Leave  me  alone,  leave  me  alone  ; 
there  is  too  much  life  in  me  already.’  ”  .  .  .  “  Power  ?  Love 
of  power  ?  ”  he  asks,  in  another  place  ;  “  does  c  power  ’  mean 
the  faculty  of  giving  places,  of  having  newspaper  paragraphs, 
of  being  waited  on  by  sycophants  ?  To  ride  in  gilt  coaches, 
escorted  by  the  flunkeyisms  and  most  sweet  voices, — I  assure 
thee,  it  is  not  the  Heaven  of  all,  but  only  of  many  !  Some  born 
kings  I  myself  have  known,  of  stout  natural  limbs,  who,  in 
shoes  of  moderately  good  fit,  found  quiet  walking  handier ; 
and  crowned  themselves  almost  too  sufficiently,  by  putting  on 
their  own  private  hat,  with  some  spoken  or  speechless,  ‘  God 
enable  me  to  be  king  of  what  lies  under  this  !  For  eternities 
lie  under  it,  and  Infinitudes, — and  Heaven  also  and  Hell.  And 
it  is  as  big  as  the  Universe,  this  Kingdom ;  and  I  am  to  con¬ 
quer  it,  or  be  for  ever  conquered  by  it,  now  while  it  is  called 
to-day.’  ” 

Mr.  Carlyle  seems,  from  the  tenor  of  these  passages,  to 
suppose  that  great  men  like  in  the  first  instance  governing 
themselves  :  that  they  derive  their  principal  and  most  genial 
satisfaction  from  that  employment ;  preferring  it  to  the  con¬ 
quest  of  cities,  and  to  the  vulgar  grasp  of  political  or  terri¬ 
torial  power  :  that,  however,  in  great  emergencies,  and  when 
the  cries  of  distressed  human  nature  are  heard,  imploring  their 
interference,  they  are  sometimes  induced  to  exchange  that 
edifying  and  delightful  work  for  a  more  ordinary  and  material 
one ;  and  that  then  reluctantly  tearing  themselves  from  the 
concerns  of  their  internal  empire,  they  are  seen  heading 
armies  and  presiding  over  administrations.  Under  this 
happy  conviction,  the  desire  to  go  beneath  the  surface  of  a 
great  man’s  professions  and  language  is  put  down  as  “  vulpine.” 
The  “  vulpine  intellect  ”  is  requested  to  absent  itself  from  this 


Carlyle s  Cromwell. 


307 


department  of  observation.  Greatness  is  not  allowed  to  be 
probed.  And  a  large  and  generous,  admiring  swalloiv,  and 
confiding  instinct,  supersede  the  operation  of  caution,  inquiry, 
and  discernment. 

A  tendency  to  this  view,  though  not  carried  so  far  as  Mr. 
Carlyle  carries  it,  is  observable  in  a  popular  line  of  thought 
among  us.  There  is  a  reaction  from  a  cold  age,  and  cynical 
schools,  to  a  more  generous  and  enthusiastic  philosophy.  An 
admiration  of  greatness  is,  so  to  speak,  fashionable.  It  is  con¬ 
sidered  to  give  the  proper  point  of  view  from  which  to  look 
at  human  nature  and  character ;  and  a  great  man,  who  has  an 
historical  position,  meets  with  a  very  liberal  and  sympathetic 
reception.  Is  he  a  great  man  ?  is  the  question  asked ;  and, 
if  he  is,  without  positively  negativing  other  considerations,  there 
is  a  disposition  to  stop  short  there,  and  be  content  with  that 
aspect  of  him.  And  greatness  of  the  powerful  and  bold  stamp, 
particularly  if  its  power  and  boldness  have  an  enthusiastic 
look,  has  become  an  especial  favourite.  Much  pleasure  is  felt 
in  this  admiration,  and  the  mind  of  the  admirer  seems  to  itself 
to  be  enlarging  and  expanding  in  sympathy  with  its  object. 
Though  the  fact  does  not  necessarily  follow,  the  sensation  is 
produced  ;  and  it  is  a  stimulating  and  grateful  one.  The  dis¬ 
position  to  deal  on  generous  and  unconfined  terms  with  Genius 
is  thus  naturally  encouraged,  and  the  heroic  sympathy  ad¬ 
vances  on  a  principle  of  internal  progress  and  development. 
The  mind  wishes  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  grand  and  the 
lofty,  the  large  and  the  able,  the  splendid  and  the  terrible,  in 
the  world  of  character ;  and  in  this  congenial  spirit  embraces 
the  phenomena  of  majesty,  power,  and  genius,  on  their  broad 
and  ocular  ground.  It  likes  all  strong  developments  of 
character  :  it  takes  to  all  forms  of  enthusiasm.  An  idea  in 
fashion  becomes,  by  an  intelligible  process,  more  or  less 
unconsciously  pedantic,  and  a  too  simple  affection  for  great¬ 
ness  parades  its  favourite;  and  becomes  unsuspicious,  confiding, 
jubilant,  and  rather  wearisome,  on  a  theory  somewhat  like 
Mr.  Carlyle’s. 

With  this  theory,  then,  of  our  author’s,  we  cannot  agree. 
A  man  who  enters  upon  the  field  of  character,  dispossessed  of 


308  Carlyles  Cromwell. 

the  element  of  suspicion,  holds  a  very  simple,  indeed,  but  a 
somewhat  hazardous  philosophy.  Nor  unless  great  men  are 
examined  do  we  see  hope  of  attaining  to  much  satisfactory 
knowledge  of  them ;  for  their  characters  are  not  always  of 
crystalline  transparency.  Does  Mr.  Carlyle  know,  or  does  he 
forget,  that  he  is  addressing  this  appeal  of  his  to  a  world 
endowed  with  conscience,  perception,  experience,  and  very 
familiarly  acquainted  with  the  material  of  which  its  great 
man’s  virtue  is  often  made  ?  Do  the  developments  of  human 
character  offer  in  his  opinion  no  field  for  suspicion  because 
they  are  wonderful  ?  And  is  there  no  such  thing  as  evil 
working  underneath  a  veil,  and  embodying  itself  in  per¬ 
plexing  and  delusive  as  well  as  plain,  in  great  as  well  as  little, 
forms  ? 

If  common  sense  were  not  against  such  a  view,  Christianity 
would  be.  A  Christian  is  bound  by  his  very  creed  to  suspect 
evil,  and  cannot  release  himself.  What  is  his  situation  ?  He 
belongs  to  a  world  in  which  everything  is  fair-spoken  and  goes 
on  under  a  guise  of  purity,  and  he  knows  for  a  positive  truth 
that  it  is  rotten  to  the  core  and  impregnated  with  evil  every¬ 
where.  His  religion  has  brought  evil  to  light  in  a  way  in 
which  it  never  was  before  ;  it  has  shown  its  depth,  subtlety, 
ubiquity ;  and  a  revelation,  full  of  mercy  on  the  one  hand,  is 
terrible  in  its  exposure  of  the  world’s  real  state  on  the  other. 
The  Gospel  fastens  the  sense  of  evil  upon  the  mind ;  a 
Christian  is  enlightened,  hardened,  sharpened,  as  to  evil ;  he 
sees  it  where  others  do  not  ;  his  instinct  is  divinely 
strengthened :  his  eye  is  supernaturally  keen ;  he  has  a 
spiritual  insight,  and  senses  exercised  to  discern  ;  he  has  been 
made  partaker  of  the  wisdom  of  Him  “  who  knew  what  was  in 
man  ;  ”  and  has  been  tempered  by  that  word  which  “  is  sharper 
than  any  two-edged  sword,  piercing  even  to  the  dividing 
asunder  of  soul  and  spirit,  and  of  the  joints  and  marrow, 
and  is  a  discerner  of  the  thoughts  and  intents  of  the  heart.” 
Evil  would  escape  his  eye,  but  it  cannot ;  it  lurks  in  its  hole, 
and  he  pursues  it ;  it  rolls  itself  in  its  folds,  and  he  uncovers 
it ;  he  drags  it  out  to  light,  and  shames  it,  in  himself  and  in 
others,  before  the  sun.  Talk  to  others  about  “  trusting  in 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


309 


man,”  and  tell  others  to  suspect  nothing,  and  “  detect  ” 
nothing  ;  he  is  not  to  be  so  persuaded.  Let  those  he  deceived 
who  think  it  glorious  to  be  :  his  Bible  condemns  a  “  fool.” 
He  discredits  his  name  and  his  creed  if  evil  imposes  on  him. 
He  owns  the  doctrine  of  original  sin.  That  doctrine  puts  him 
necessarily  on  his  guard  against  appearances,  sustains  his 
apprehension  under  perplexity,  and  prepares  him  for  recognis¬ 
ing  anywhere  what  he  knows  to  be  everywhere.  In  contrast 
with  that  tasteless  generosity  which  likes  the  mixture  of  good 
and  evil,  he  consolidates,  by  a  keen  process  of  discernment  and 
separation, — ever  dividing  the  real  from  the  unreal,  the  hard 
from  the  soft,  in  moral  nature, — a  true,  pure,  impenetrable,  and 
immortal  good.  Mr.  Carlyle’s  semi-paganism  has  not  this  keen 
perception  of  evil ;  he  does  not  see  it  as  Christianity  has 
revealed  it,  and  therefore  he  does  not  understand  its  ways. 
Pagan  genius  has  richness  and  fertility ;  Christian  common 
sense  is  acute.  The  clear  hardness  of  the  spiritual  faculty  cuts 
through  the  medium  which  stops  the  earthly  one.  The  pagan 
mind  exposes  itself  in  the  department  of  character.  With 
all  its  rush  and  gushing  strength,  it  has  a  soft  and  weak 
attitude  towards  evil ;  it  is  not  shrewd,  and  allows  itself  to  be 
imposed  on  and  blinded  by  a  veil  of  material  sublimity  and 
expansion. 

When  Mr.  Carlyle,  then,  shelters  such  a  career  as  Cromwell’s 
under  an  indefinite  irresponsible  grandeur,  and  forbids  all  little 
men  who  have  not  subverted  constitutions  the  presumption  of 
inspecting  him,  when  he  throws  a  colossal  greatness  in  our 
teeth  to  shame  suspicion  and  put  inquiry  out  of  countenance, 
the  argumentum  ad  vermmdiam  speaks  very  ineffectually  either 
to  common-sense  or  Christianity.  They  are  familiar  with  that 
veil  of  hypocrisy  under  which  human  nature  covers  itself.  “  The 
history  of  all  ages,  and  all  countries,”  says  Bishop  Butler,  “  will 
show  what  has  been  really  going  forward  over  the  face  of  the 
earth  to  have  been  very  different  from  what  has  been  always 
pretended.”  Conventional  form  and  usage  politely  attribute 
absolute  disinterestedness  to  all  members  of  the  social  body. 
At  public  meetings  where  speeches  are  made,  and  public  dinners 
where  toasts  are  drunk,  an  apotheosis  of  human  nature  goes 


3IQ 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


on ;  large  rooms  are  supposed  to  be  crowned  witli  virtue,  and 
an  unimpeachable  magnanimity  is  assigned  to  persons  in 
general.  Society  has  current  dicta  about  itself.  There  are 
standing  allusions  to  virtue,  which  everybody  supposes  to  be 
true,  and  everybody  knows  to  be  false.  All  political  men,  as 
such,  suppose  themselves  to  act  from  pure  patriotism,  generosity, 
and  public  spirit,  in  the  career  they  pursue,  and  to  regard  as 
trifling  the  personal  advantages  of  fame  or  station  which 
accompany  it.  And  these  conventional  illusions  take  an 
extravagant  leap,  and  reach  a  climax  of  audacity  in  a  revolu¬ 
tionary  movement.  There  the  successful  man  clutches  a  world 
as  his  prize,  and  claims  transcendental  generosity  as  his  motive. 
He  did  not  care  for  power  or  importance  ;  he  did  not  want 
station  or  dignity  ;  the  throne,  the  chair  of  state,  came  of  them¬ 
selves,  and  he  had  them  because  he  could  not  help  having 
them  ;  but  they  were  wholly  external  to  his  mind,  and  did  not 
touch  the  simplicity  of  his  motives.  Thus  the  very  largeness 
of  the  object  protects  the  designer,  and  earth’s  pride,  because  it 
comes  as  one  great  whole,  passes  off  as  disinterestedness. 
Greatness  does  not  care  for  itself,  according  to  the  world’s 
conventional,  and  Mr.  Carlyle’s  real,  sentimentalism.  But 
everybody  knows  that  it  does,  and  it  is  absurd  to  deny  it. 

Nor  will  common-sense  again  yield  for  a  moment  to  that 
puffy  or  that  mawkish  bombast  which  on  the  behalf  of  great  men 
is  always  ready  to  come  forward  and  despise  “ baubles,”  and 
“  trifles,”  and  “  glitter,”  “  show,”  and  “  toys.”  Genius  does  not 
value  baubles,  is  the  watchword.  But  genius  does  value  them. 
Genius  relishes  them  extremely,  and  it  does  so  on  a  natural 
and  necessary  principle.  Let  it  be  granted  that  a  great  worldly 
genius  does  at  first  pursue  a  greatness  of  a  more  ideal  nature, 
and  goes  through  fire  and  strife  for  an  abstraction.  An  idea, 
however,  may  be  just  as  selfish  as  a  solidity.  If  his  idea  be  so, 
it  will  embody  itself  sooner  or  later,  in  an  outward  form  suit¬ 
able  to  its  temper :  and  it  will  then  have  to  betake  itself  to 
baubles.  Baubles  are  the  legitimate  development  and  expres¬ 
sion  of  that  idea  of  greatness  on  which  a  worldly  genius  dwells  ; 
if  power  as  such  is  relished,  its  images  please.  The  great 
man’s  mind  is  itself  the  vivifying  principle  and  soul  of  the 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell.  3  1 1 

sphere  of  pomp  and  circumstance  which  it  has  gathered 
around  it,  and  a  whole  world  of  state  expresses  the  swell  and 
expansion  of  the  internal  and  imaginative  self.  Nice  distinc¬ 
tions  are  irrelevant ;  if  a  certain  greatness  is  relished,  its  soul 
and  its  body,  essence  and  circumstance,  power,  baubles,  and  all, 
are  swallowed ; — all  make  one,  and  one  highly-relished  whole. 
We  can  raise  a  smile  without  a  difficulty  at  the  world’s  little 
great  man,  but  are  we  quite  sure  that  the  reason  why  we  cannot 
smile  at  the  great  one  is,  that  he  does  not  deserve  it,  and  not 
rather  that  we  are  not  high  enough  to  do  it  ?  The  burden  of 
earth  lies  heavy  upon  us ;  this  vast  overshadowing  system 
oppresses  the  clear  spirit  in  our  minds,  clogs  its  vision,  and 
chokes  its  liveliness.  We  let  ourselves  be  overpowered,  and 
sink  underneath  the  vastness  of  space  and  the  majesty  of 
matter.  The  ambition  that  advances  on  a  large  scale  is  altered 
not  in  quantity  only,  but  even  in  quality,  to  us,  by  the  large¬ 
ness  of  its  field  of  action ;  intellectual  power  intimately 
mingles  with  and  protects  the  moral  weakness ;  and  the  latter 
is  not  despised  on  account  of  its  companion.  We  see  the 
weakness,  however,  still,  the  essential  littleness,  the  look  to 
self,  going  on  underneath  these  great  activities,  and  mixing 
with  this  subtle  intellectual  world.  We  see  the  earthly 
genius,  soothed  and  titillated  by  the  materialism  of  power,  its 
sensualities  and  machinery  of  flattery ;  we  see  intellect  ming¬ 
ling  with  flesh,  loving  the  world’s  paint  and  varnish,  and 
embracing  its  own  kindred  dust  and  rottenness. 

Cromwell’s  wonderful  shadowy  mind  was  an  ambitious  one. 
He  pursued  power  with  a  keen  eye,  through  fields  of  blood  and 
struggles  of  diplomacy ;  he  “  slew  a  man  ”  to  get  it,  and  he 
relished  it  when  he  got  it.  He  had  the  deep  excitement  of  the 
pursuit,  and  the  superficial  one  of  the  enjoyment :  and  the  cold, 
iron,  ascetic  abstraction  that  led  him  on  unwearied  through 
his  years  of  fighting  and  gloom,  embodied  itself,  in  the  day  of 
triumph  and  attainment,  in  the  Protectorate.  It  then  took  to 
itself,  naturally,  a  secular  form  of  pomp  and  grandeur,  and 
effloresced  in  anterooms  and  audiences,  life-guards  and  gentle- 
men-in-waiting,  lacqueys,  pages,  and  state-coaches.  Guilty 
greatness  became  more  respectable,  but  more  vulgar,  and  fed 


3 1 2  Carlyle  s  Cromwell . 

upon  solid  terrene  things ;  nor  did  the  constant  struggle 
necessary  to  keep  up  the  position  negative  the  satisfaction  of 
the  position  itself.  Was  it  the  aspiring  wish  of  a  religious 
enthusiast,  or  the  respectable  taste  of  the  founder  of  a  dynasty, 
that  made  him  deliberately  impose  an  entirely  incapable  son, 
only  because  he  was  his  heir,  as  his  successor  on  the  nation  ? 
Was  there  spiritual  ardour,  or  secularity,  there  ?  Did  he  wish 
to  establish  the  reign  of  justice,  or  to  establish  a  family? 
What  reason  was  there  for  leaving  a  son  he  knew  was  not 
fit  to  govern  as  his  successor,  but  the  common  secular  wish 
which  human  nature  has  to  create  hereditary  property  and  to 
build  a  house  ?  Cromwell  threw  himself  into  the  revolutionary 
temper  when  he  had  his  way  to  make  :  he  threw  himself  into 
the  conservative  temper  when  he  had  made  it :  he  threw  him¬ 
self  into  the  enthusiastic,  he  threw  himself  into  the  dis¬ 
creet  state  of  mind.  Certainly,  every  day,  as  he  went  on, 
made  him  more  conservative ;  and  had  he  lived,  and  had 
entirely  his  way,  we  doubt  not,  in  time  he  wTould  have 
reconstructed  the  sober  erection  of  legitimacy,  of  which  he 
wanted  to  change  the  occupancy  rather  than  the  basis.  Judg¬ 
ing  from  the  tendencies  he  exhibited,  he  would  have  adopted, 
as  indeed  he  actually  did,  much  of  the  same  policy  which  the 
present  King  of  the  French  carries  on.  On  the  first  decent  and 
prudent  opportunity,  and  as  soon  as  the  scruples  of  the  army 
had  abated,  he  would  have  got  the  crown.  His  sons  would 
have  been  princes  of  the  blood-royal,  with  York  and  Kent 
dukedoms  ;  his  daughters  princesses.  He  would  have  allied 
himself  with  those  European  houses  who  had  no  objection  to 
the  mesalliance,  and  he  would  have  overlooked  a  little  stain  of 
Popery,  provided  it  discoloured  some  royal  blood.  He  would 
have  had  no  objection  to  a  house  of  lords ;  none  to  an  estab¬ 
lished  church  ;  none  to  a  quiet  and  submissive  episcopacy. 
He  would  have  restored  Church  and  King;  only  that  the 
Church  would  have  been  Tillotson’s  and  not  Laud’s,  and  the 
King  would  have  been  Cromwell  and  not  Charles.  These 
arrangements  would  have  furnished  much  satisfaction  in  the 
management  and  the  results  ;  and,  in  due  time,  King  Oliver  I. 
would  have  left  the  crown  to  King  Richard  iv. 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell .  313 

With  respect  to  Mr.  Carlyle’s  argument  that  Cromwell 
could  not  have  had  an  ambitious  temper  because  he  was  forty 
before  he  began  his  career,  we  do  not  see  at  all  the  force  of  it. 
Human  character  sometimes  develops  itself  earlier  and  some¬ 
times  later ;  nor  can  any  inference  be  drawn  from  the  previous 
non-appearance  of  a  symptom  against  its  subsequent  appear¬ 
ance.  The  affections  of  the  human  body  are  latent  often  for  a 
considerable  portion  of  a  life  ;  they  then  come  out  of  their 
latent  state,  and  appear  in  sensible  form.  It  is  the  same  with 
those  of  the  mind.  And  it  would  be  as  absurd  to  argue  that 
ambition  could  not  operate  at  a  later  period,  because  it  did  not 
at  an  earlier,  as  it  would  be  to  assert  that  a  man  could  not  have 
a  liver  complaint  at  fifty,  because  he  had  not  one  at  forty. 
The  difficulty,  moreover,  if  it  is  one,  is  not  confined  to  instances 
alone  in  which  evil  is  the  subject-matter;  but  to  cases  good, 
bad,  and  indifferent  equally.  All  persons,  of  whatever  char¬ 
acter,  who  have  pursued  a  great  line,  and  done  a  great  work, 
have  begun  them  at  some  time  or  other  of  their  lives ;  and  this 
has  been  sometimes  earlier  and  sometimes  later.  Sylla  was 
forty  before  he  entered  on  his  ambitious  career,  till  which  time 
he  had  been  little  more  than  a  literary  lounger  and  a  dissipated 
man  of  fashion  in  the  Eoman  circles.  Hildebrand’s  age  was 
bordering  on  forty  before  he  entered  on  his  career,  considered 
by  many  an  ambitious  one,  till  which  time  he  had  been  a 
monk,  fasting  and  praying,  in  the  monastery  of  Clugni.  Crom¬ 
well  also  was  forty  before  he  entered  on  his  career,  and  had 
been  till  that  time  principally  farming  at  St.  Ives.  On  the 
other  hand,  Caesar  began  his  course  early ;  Alexander  was 
only  thirty-two  when  he  had  finished  his ;  Pompey  was  saluted 
Imperator  at  twenty-three ;  Charles  V.  was  great  at  nineteen  ; 
and  Mr.  Pitt  was  Prime  Minister  at  twenty-five.  This  differ¬ 
ence  sometimes  can  be  accounted  for  by  outward  circumstances, 
and  sometimes  cannot.  There  is  no  reason  to  be  given  why 
Hildebrand  or  why  Sylla  could  not  have  begun  their  great 
courses  earlier ;  but  we  are  not  perplexed  by  the  fact  that 
they  did  not,  and  do  not  consider  the  late  public  appearance 
of  their  characters  to  negative  them  when  they  do  appear. 
And,  after  all,  circumstances  more  or  less  explain  the  fact  in 


3 1 4  Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 

Cromwell’s  case.  Had  lie  chosen  to  come  forward  irregularly 
and  prematurely,  he  might  doubtless  have  done  so  sooner. 
But  he  seems  to  have  only  followed  the  natural  course  of 
events  in  choosing  his  time ;  he  seems,  like  many  others,  to 
have  only  delayed  acting  because  he  waited  for  an  opportunity, 
and  not  from  any  inherent  disposition  to  quiet.  He  spoke,  and 
created  a  sensation  within  the  walls  of  Parliament  at  the  age  of 
twenty-nine.  He  did  not  speak  in  Parliament  again  for  ten 
years,  because  there  was  no  Parliament  to  speak  in.  But  he 
procured  his  return  to  the  very  next  that  was  held ;  and  the 
year  1640  saw  him  fairly  embarked  on  his  career. 

Against  such  a  view  as  this,  the  appearances  of  sincerity 
and  reality  which  Cromwell  shows  may  be  appealed  to ;  and  it 
may  be  said  these  evidently  are  not  a  mere  outside ;  these 
feelings  and  emotions  are  really  felt  by  the  man:  he  was  there¬ 
fore  in  earnest,  and  could  not  have  been  interested  or  selfish. 

Mr.  Carlyle  on  this  subject  has  one,  and  one  only,  very 
superficial  argument,  which  he  hacks  to  the  end  of  the  chapter. 
He  says  Cromwell  was  not  a  stage  actor,  a  street  impostor, 
therefore  he  was  a  sineere  and  disinterested  man.  But  there 
is  no  occasion  whatever  to  take  this  alternative.  Will  it  be 
admitted  that  a  deep  mind  can  be  hypocritical  as  well  as  a 
shallow  one  ?  If  it  is,  it  follows  that  more  than  one  kind  of 
hypocrisy  will  exist  in  the  world.  A  deep  mind  must,  by  its 
own  nature,  live  in  deeper  water  than  a  shallow  one.  It  cannot 
bear  simple  superficiality ;  its  very  machinery  must  be  as 
native,  and  its  very  art  as  akin  to  instinct  as  it  can  be  ;  its 
source  of  action  must  be  as  subterranean  and  its  design  as  un¬ 
conscious  as  it  is  possible.  Some  minds  can  have  real  sensa¬ 
tions,  and  consciously  direct  them,  curb  or  spur  being  used,  as 
occasion  requires ;  the  intellectual  faculty  in  them  can  use  the 
material  which  pathetic  nature  supplies ;  and  the  man  himself 
be  half  in  and  half  out  of  his  own  feelings.  There  is  a  power 
of  keeping  the  inward  eye  shut  or  open ;  of  seeing  and  not 
seeing  at  once  ;  of  raising  instinct  upon  purpose,  and  sustaining 
nature  upon  art.  The  brazen  hypocrisy  which  simply  falsifies, 
and  says  what  it  does  not  think,  can  hardly,  ipso  facto ,  be  the 
hypocrisy  of  a  deep  mind.  A  coarse  impudent  outside  tells 


3 1 5 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 

its  tale,  and  persuades  nobody  that  is  worth  persuading.  The 
secret  of  impressing  is  being  impressed ;  the  power  of  feeling- 
makes  others  feel ;  and  what  is  assumed  effectually  must  be 
assumed  within.  The  old  question  of  the  compatibility  of 
imposture  with  enthusiasm  may  now  be  considered  settled. 
The  world  does  not  go  on  living  for  nothing ;  human  nature 
gets  to  know  itself  better,  as  human  nature  is  longer  before  its 
own  eye.  The  laws  of  matter  and  of  mind  become  more  under¬ 
stood  as  the  world  goes  on  ;  and  what  was  a  strange  fragmentary 
phenomenon  one  day  is  the  chartered  and  systematised  one  of 
the  next.  A  fact,  very  wonderful  in  its  nature,  has  ceased  to 
offer  any  difficulty,  as  a  fact.  The  combination  of  enthusiasm 
and  selfishness  may  have  been  strange  once,  but  it  is  no  longer 
so  now ;  it  is  a  thing  seen,  known,  and  counted  on.  It  is  an 
observed  thing,  and  it  has  taken  its  place  among  the  other 
facts  belonging  to  the  natural  history  of  the  human  mind.  The 
diseases  of  the  human  body  are  strange  wild  phenomena  when 
they  first  make  their  appearance  in  the  world  ;  but  they  become, 
in  course  of  time,  subjects  of  ordinary  observation,  and  of 
scientific  treatment  and  analysis.  It  is  the  same  with  the 
department  of  the  human  mind.  Curious  complex  develop¬ 
ments  appear  in  it ;  they  puzzle  the  world  at  first,  and  are  not 
understood ;  but  afterwards  they  become  recognised  classified 
facts,  and  come  under  scientific  examination.  The  experience 
of  the  world,  indeed,  like  that  of  legal  courts,  has  attained  such 
a  formal  certainty  here  that,  on  that  very  account,  its  view  is 
now  considered  obsolete  by  some  ;  and  promiscuous  enthusiasm 
has  become  the  idol  of  a  new  philosophy.  But  this  will  not  do. 
The  subtle  combinations  in  human  character,  when  once  ob¬ 
served,  keep  their  place  as  facts ;  just  as  the  discoveries  of 
astronomy  and  chemistry  do.  And  therefore  it  may  be  con¬ 
sidered  certain,  now,  that  hypocrisy  may  exist  in  a  deep  mind ; 
that,  if  it  does,  it  will  be  a  deep  kind  of  hypocrisy ;  and  that 
a  deep  kind  of  hypocrisy  will  be  original  and  versatile,  and 
naturally  combine  with  the  feeling,  sentiment,  emotion,  and 
whole  pathetic  nature  of  the  man. 

But  Cromwell  was  not  only  an  enthusiast,  but  a  religious 
enthusiast.  He  had  the  religious  sense  strongly.  Beligious 


3 1 6  Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 

thoughts  ran  through  his  mind  ;  religious  shadows  and  images 
haunted  him  ;  religious  feelings  mingled  with  his  whole  career. 
And  what  if  they  did?  The  religious  sense,  viewed  as  the 
simple  apprehension  of  a  spiritual  world,  is  in  itself  no  pre¬ 
servative  whatever  against  moral  obliquity.  The  term  religion 
stands  for  two  distinct  things.  It  both  stands  for  the  ethical 
thing  so  called,  i.e.  a  proper  state  of  religious  habits  and  affec¬ 
tions  ;  and  also  stands  for  the  intellectual  or  metaphysical 
thing  so  called,  i.e.  the  sense  of,  or  belief  in,  the  fact  of  a 
spiritual  and  invisible  world.  Spirituality  and  invisibility  are 
not  in  themselves  ethical  but  metaphysical  ideas ;  and  the 
sense  of  a  world  spiritual  is  no  more  an  ethical  sense  in  itself 
than  the  sight  of  a  world  visible  is.  As  supplying  then  an 
ethical,  and  as  supplying  a  simply  spiritual,  world  to  our 
minds,  as  making  us  act  and  feel  in  a  particular  way,  and  as 
impressing  upon  us  with  more  or  less  intensity  and  liveliness 
the  fact  of  the  invisible,  religion  has  a  very  different  character 
and  power.  A  spiritual  world,  over  and  above  this  visible  one, 
is  a  most  important  addition  to  our  idea  of  the  universe,  and 
enlarges  our  mental  prospect ;  but  it  does  not  of  itself  touch 
our  moral  nature.  It  leaves  us,  on  that  head,  where  it  finds  us. 
The  moral  effect  of  a  spiritual  world  upon  us  depends  entirely 
upon  what  we  make  that  world  to  be,  and  what  we  make  that 
world  to  be  depends  upon  our  own  ethical  standard  and  per¬ 
ceptions.  The  Mahometan,  the  Scandinavian,  the  Indian 
paradises  were  all  invisible  worlds  to  their  believers,  but  they 
did  not  improve  their  morality,  because  they  were  themselves 
the  creations  of  it.  The  world  invisible  is  the  enlargement  of 
the  internal  world  of  our  owTn  minds  ;  it  carries  out  the  feelings 
and  wishes  which  our  own  moral  nature  has  previously  formed, 
and  is  appealed  to  as  the  partisan  or  patron  of  that  cause,  good 
or  bad,  to  which  our  state  of  mind  has  committed  us.  The 
savage  sees  his  own  passion  for  revenge  represented  on  the 
Almighty  throne ;  revenge  is  his  honour  and  duty,  and  the 
spiritual  world  sympathises  with  him  in  it.  And  the  Puritan 
had  his  invisible  world  too,  fighting  with  him  and  around  him ; 
he  had  his  deliverances,  mercies,  providences,  and  dispensations. 
He  talked  and  thought  much  about  invisible  things.  But  that 


Carlyles  Cromwell. 


317 


was  neither  one  thing  nor  another  in  itself ;  he  talked  and  he 
thought  much  about  his  own  invisible.  We  must  not  confound 
the  ever  so  lively  cognisance  of  spirituality  and  simple  invisi¬ 
bility  with  ethical  religion,  as  if  a  man  must  be  ethically  re¬ 
ligious  who  has  much  of  the  notion  of  invisibility  in  his  head. 
He  may  have  a  perpetual  notion  in  his  head  of  a  world  invisible  ; 
it  may  always  be  hovering  over  him,  overshadowing  him,  run¬ 
ning  in  his  thoughts,  without  interference  with  his  ethical 
standard,  or  any  check  to  his  will. 

The  invisible  world  which  attended  Cromwell  on  his  course 
was  not  a  world  which  interfered  with  his  designs  or  chastened 
or  corrected  his  motives.  It  was  a  world  which  was  the  partisan 
of  Puritanism,  whatever  Puritanism  did ;  and  therefore,  as  a 
Puritan,  it  necessarily  never  came  into  collision  with  him  ;  it 
not  only  let  him  do  what  he  liked,  but  urged  him  vehemently 
to  do  it,  and  covered  him  with  praises  for  it  when  it  was  done. 
Still  less  did  he  come  into  collision  with  it  as  a  man  of  the 
world  and  statesman.  In  that  region  his  subtlety  could  half 
believe  and  half  use  its  instigations ;  and  keep  him  within  it, 
and  without  it ;  sustaining  it,  and  sustained  by  it.  A  deep 
political  aim  penetrated  through  this  spiritual  atmosphere;  the 
mercurial  world  flattered  the  mind  that  controlled  it ;  and  his 
religion  mingled  Proteus-like  with  dark  political  plot  and  selfish 
labyrinthal  diplomacy.  Cromwell  had  a  natural  turn  for  the 
invisible ;  he  thought  of  the  invisible  till  he  died ;  but  the 
cloudy  arch  only  canopied  a  field  of  human  aim  and  will.  It 
is  not  every  religion  that  can  subdue  earth  ;  an  inferior  religion 
is  led  captive,  and  attaches  herself  to  earth’s  train,  continuing 
all  the  time  a  sort  of  religion.  There  is  the  high  and  the  low 
spiritual.  The  low  spiritual  mixes  very  well  with  the  earthly, 
and  produces  an  ambitious,  ominous,  preaching  and  plotting, 
cloudily  fanatic,  and  solidly  terrene  soul  of  a  Lord  General  and 
Protector. 

To  bring  these  remarks  then  to  a  head.  The  hypocrites  of 
the  Hew  Testament,  says  Bishop  Butler,  are  sometimes  called 
so  “  not  all  upon  account  of  any  insincerity  towards  men,  but 
merely  upon  account  of  their  insincerity  towards  God,  and 
their  own  consciences.  For  they  were  not  men,”  he  adds,  “  who, 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


3i8 

without  any  belief  at  all  of  religion,  put  on  the  appearance  of 
it  only  in  order  to  deceive  the  world  :  on  the  contrary,  they 
believed  their  religion,  and  were  zealous  in  it.  But  their 
religion  which  they  believed  and  were  zealous  in,  was  in  its 
nature  hypocritical ;  for  it  was  the  form,  not  the  reality  ;  it 
allowed  them  in  immoral  practices,  and,  indeed,  was  itself  in 

some  respects  immoral . By  some  force,  some  energy  of 

delusion  they  believed  a  lie.”  Such  is  the  example  to  which 
that  great  philosophic  mind  goes  to  illustrate  the  religion  of 
the  consummators  of  the  Great  Rebellion.  He  compares  them 
with  the  Pharisees  :  and  he  applies  to  them,  with  severe  and 
considerate  precision,  the  same  name  which  the  Bible  gives  to 
those  enemies  of  our  Lord,  in  the  same  sense  in  which  the 
Bible  applies  it.  He  says  of  their  consummating  act — and  let 
the  sentence  be  attended  to,  for  though  a  very  short,  it  is  a 
very  weighty  one — “  Ho  age  can  show  an  example  of  hypocrisy 
parallel  to  this.”  Butler  is  not  a  person  to  judge  of  any  events 
or  any  men,  upon  mere  party  feeling  or  off-hand  presump¬ 
tion.  He  is  not  a  man  who  says  strong  or  sharp  things 
when  they  are  not  called  for ;  who  wishes  to  sting,  and  aims  at 
point,  and  scatters  censure  heedlessly  :  he  is  no  vulgar  satirist, 
no  hasty  judge.  If  ever  mortal  mind  enjoyed  a  freedom  from 
the  common  hurries  and  confusions  which  attend  human 
opinion,  it  was  his ;  if  ever  man  was  truly  great  as  a  thinker, 
calm,  considerate,  imperturbable,  sublimely  dispassionate,  it  was 
he.  And  the  sermon  on  the  Great  Rebellion,  to  which  we  are 
referring,  exemplifies  this  temper.  He  does  not  take  there  the 
simple  popular  view  of  Puritanism ;  he  enters  esoterically  into 
its  character,  comes  into  real  solid  mental  contact  with  it, 
and  turns  it  over  as  a  form  of  religion  in  his  thoughts  before 
he  speaks  of  its  public  acts.  Moreover,  he  was  not  likely,  as 
a  man  of  general  information,  to  be  ignorant  of  its  history  ; 
certainly  the  most  unlikely  man  that  ever  lived  to  be  ignorant 
of  it  if  he  wrote  about  it.  He  thus  does  justice  and  allows  full 
weight  to  the  religious  professions  of  the  Puritan  leaders  ;  he 
thinks  them  religious  men  in  a  sense.  And  upon  a  review  of 
history,  conducted  in  harmony  with  his  own  deep  contemplative 
knowledge  of  the  operations  of  man’s  mind  and  will,  he  decides 


Carlyle s  Cromwell. 


319 


that  their  religion  was  in  its  nature  hypocritical,  and  their  zeal 
an  immoral  one.  Begging  therefore  to  confront  Mr.  Carlyle 
with  Butler,  we  feel  ourselves  under  the  authority  of  so  great  a 
religious  and  philosophical  name,  simply  performing  an  act 
of  judicial  morality,  in  applying  to  Cromwell  the  name  of 
hypocrite.1 

The  character  of  Cromwell  is  a  vast  and  wonderful,  but  an 
uninteresting,  unlovely  one.  He  appeared  first  before  us  in 
this  sketch,  as  the  regicide,  the  one  man  at  whose  door  the  mur¬ 
der  of  Charles  lay.  The  eye  as  it  analysed  events  and  disen¬ 
gaged  realities  from  their  cumbrous  foreground,  saw  Charles  and 
Cromwell  standing  alone  in  that  scene.  A  mercurial  subtlety 
then  accompanied  an  audacious  self-will ;  and  Cromwell  to  the 
historical  eye  is  one  soluble  whole,  spreading  everywhere  like 
water  in  the  political  world,  coming  up  everywhere,  insinuating 
himself  into  all  interests,  all  parties.  With  a  perpetual  flux 
and  reflux  he  flows  from,  he  absorbs  into,  his  own  centre.  He 
is  the  genius,  the  anima  mundi  of  the  Great  Rebellion  ;  he 
pervades  its  movements,  shapes  its  course ;  he  inhabits  it ;  he 
is  its  god ;  and  the  ubiquity  of  a  deep  mind  occupies  and  sways 
the  vast  tumultuous  world  of  matter  and  will.  But  Cromwell 
exhibits  this  character  without  those  fine  additions  and  sets- 
off,  which,  though  not  redeeming  it  (a  thing  impossible),  have 
sometimes  thrown  a  pictorial  and  refining  light  upon  it,  in  the 
case  of  other  men.  Subtlety  and  blood  have  not  seldom  con¬ 
trived  to  be  fascinating ;  and  the  great  though  guilty  mind 
has  won  a  tragic  interest  and  raised  a  morbid  sympathy. 
Cromwell’s  does  not.  He  had  subtlety  without  refinement ;  he 
was  a  coarse  man.  The  inbred  grace  of  humanity,  which  a 
mysterious  providence  sometimes  allows  in  this  mixed  world 
to  adorn  evil,  was  not  granted  to  him.  We  see  not  the  form 
divine  of  either  body  or  mind  ;  that  noble,  outward  cast  of 
feeling  and  shape  of  soul,  which  sometimes  cover  the  evil  man, 
are  wanting.  He  does  not  attract,  or  tempt,  or  win  us.  He 
appeals  to  no  forbidden  human  sympathies,  which  will  often 
move  and  stir  within  us,  even  when  we  feel  we  should  suppress 
them.  We  do  not  see  our  nature  even  externally  represented 


1  See  note  at  end  of  volume. 


320 


Carlyle  s  Cromwell. 


in  him ;  he  does  not  look  like  man  divine  ;  he  raises  no  regret 
that  he  was  not  what  he  was ;  or  recall  us  to  any  fancied 
original,  over  whose  stains  and  pollutions  we  are  ready  to  weep. 
We  have  no  weak  sighs,  no  longings,  no  supposings  over  him. 
The  powerful  movements,  the  cavernous  involutions  of  his  vast 
mind,  seem  almost  like  the  operations  of  some  mighty  bestial 
intellect,  which  appears  upon  earth  to  domineer  over  weaker 
humanity,  and  master  a  higher  nature  than  its  own.  We  see 
the  huge,  ponderous  strength,  as  if  of  some  prodigious  and  un¬ 
earthly  animal.  We  see  a  coarse,  and  not  a  high  strength. 
We  do  not  how  to  it.  The  dragon  of  old  romance  is  great  in 
his  way,  but  his  scales  repel  us  ;  we  look  in  wrnnder  at  him,  hut 
we  do  not  touch ;  he  is  mighty,  hut  he  is  unseemly  ;  he  is 
tremendous,  but  he  is  vile.  Human  nature  stands  disarmed 
and  weak  before  him ;  hut  still  feels  that  after  all  she  is  lofty 
and  he  is  low  ;  she  is  human  and  he  bestial.  The  intellectual 
developments  of  fallen  manhood  do  not  always  raise  it. 
Natural  subtlety  is  often  animal-like.  Coarse  intellect  is  akin 
to  matter.  Brute  genius  appeared  very  early  in  the  world,  and 
received  its  sentence  :  f<  On  thy  belly  shalt  thou  go,  and  dust 
shalt  thou  eat  all  the  days  of  thy  life.”  It  has  deceived  and 
triumphed  over  man  at  times  from  the  beginning,  and  will  do 
so  to  the  end.  But  it  is  essentially  low,  notwithstanding  its 
successes ;  its  mysterious  powers  do  not  exalt  it ;  and  it  pre¬ 
serves  its  family  relationship  to  the  dust  of  the  earth  and  to 
the  beasts  of  the  field.  True,  high,  and  consoling  thought  it  is, 
not  strange,  however  elevating,  but  the  familiar  philosophy  of 
every  religious  mind, — that  the  weakest,  most  helpless,  most 
ignorant  goodness  has  by  the  most  absolute  right  of  simple 
essence,  by  the  mere  fact  that  it  is  itself,  a  superiority  royal, 
and  fixed  as  fate,  over  such  greatness  ;  that  it  looks  down  from 
the  height  ineffable  of  another  nature,  from  the  heaven,  and  the 
heaven  of  heavens  upon  it  :  that  innocence,  if  really  such,  is 
the  imperial  quality,  and  must  enjoy  an  ultimate  dominion  ; 
that  strength  and  majesty,  eternal  height,  and  tranquillity,  belong 
by  nature  to  it ;  and  that  to  it  the  prophecy  is  spoken,  “  Upon 
the  lion  and  adder  shalt  thou  go  ;  the  young  lion  and  the 
dragon  shalt  thou  tread  under  thy  feet.” 


IY. 


LUTHER* 

(Jan.  1848.) 

The  life  and  character  of  Luther  have  been  brought  rather 
conspicuously  before  public  attention  of  late  years.  The  taste 
for  the  striking  and  powerful  forms  of  character  which  has 
been  so  general  among  us  lately,  pervading  the  most  different 
schools  of  sentiment  and  doctrine,  has  contributed  to  this.  The 
movement  of  opinion  respecting  the  Eeforination  has  also  con¬ 
tributed.  The  special  mixture  of  character  which  Luther 
exhibits  has  kept  alive  the  discussions  about  him  when  once 
begun.  Lie  is  peculiarly  a  man  whom  persons  both  like  to 
attack  and  like  to  defend.  To  his  advocates  belongs  the  un¬ 
doubted  fact  that  he  was  a  great  man ;  to  his  opponents  the 
very  awkward  question,  whether  he  was  a  saint.  He  was  very 
amiable ;  he  was  very  virulent.  He  was  frank  and  simple ; 
he  was  crafty  and  double.  He  was  not  vain;  he  was  self- 
willed  and  overbearing.  He  liked  power ;  he  was  indifferent 
to  station.  He  had  an  ardent  faith ;  he  showed  germs  of 
rationalism.  Few  characters  have  exposed  themselves  more  to 
the  attacks  of  adversaries,  or  more  engaged  the  sympathies  of 

*  1.  The  Life  of  Luther,  written  by  Himself;  collected  and  arranged  by  M. 
Michelet,  Member  of  the  Institute,  Author  of  the  History  of  France,  etc. 
Translated  by  William  Hazlitt,  Esq.,  of  the  Middle  Temple,  Barrister-at-Law. 
London,  1846. 

2.  Histoire  de  la  Vie,  des  Ecrits,  et  des  Doctrines  de  Martin  Luther.  Par  M. 
Audin,  Membre  des  Academies  Royales  de  Lyon,  Turin,  etc.  Paris,  1845. 

3.  The  Mission  of  the  Comforter  ;  and  other  Sermons ,  with  Notes.  By  Julius 
Charles  Hare,  M.A.,  Archdeacon  of  Lewes,  Rector  of  Hurstmonceaux,  and 
late  Fellow  of  Trinity  College.  London  and  Cambridge,  1846. 

m.e.-l]  X 


322 


Luther . 


friends.  His  admirers  are  indeed  fond  of  him ;  fonder,  per¬ 
haps,  for  the  very  fact  that  he  has  left  himself  so  open  to 
attack  as  lie  has.  They  think  it  an  unfairness  in  Fate  to 
Luther,  or  in  Luther  to  himself,  for  which  they  are  hound  in 
justice  to  compensate.  Should  he  suffer  for  the  temper  which 
always  made  him  show  himself  off  to  the  worst  ?  And  should 
the  fault,  which  his  own  frankness  and  carelessness  about  him¬ 
self  have  put  into  our  possession,  not  rather  commend  him  the 
more  to  the  generous  judge? 

Three  biographies  of  Luther  have  appeared  within  the  last 
few  years ;  one  by  a  friend,  another  by  an  enemy,  and  a  third 
by  a  neutral.  D’Aubigne’s  biography — for  the  first  half  of  his 
History  of  the  Deformation  may  be  so  called — has  the  merit  of 
a  good  deal  of  information,  and  a  lively  and  pointed  style,  but 
is  the  thorough-going  work  of  a  partisan.  The  writer  is  always 
colouring,  and  will  let  nothing  speak  for  itself.  His  comments 
do  not  occupy  particular  positions  and  collect  themselves  into 
main  groups,  but  are  constant  and  ever  recurring.  The  over 
quantity  of  detail  in  the  narrative — a  fault  on  its  own  account — 
is  a  worse  fault,  as  being  so  prolific  of  comment,  for  the  smallest 
detail  seldom  wants  its  appendage.  If  the  historian  has  no 
remark  to  make,  the  preacher  has ;  and  the  reader,  harassed 
with  an  endless  reiteration  of  small  reflections  and  officious 
instructions,  retaliates  by  regarding  M.  d’Aubigne  as  a  writer 
a  good  deal  more  copious  than  weighty.  His  omissions  in  the 
line  of  fact  are  nearly  as  large,  moreover,  as  his  additions  in 
the  way  of  comment.  He  leaves  out  whole  portions  of  Luther’s 
character,  or  but  faintly  alludes  to  them.  His  aim  is  to  assimi¬ 
late  Luther’s  ethical  and  religious  mould  as  much  as  possible 
to  that  of  an  evangelical  preacher  of  the  present  day.  Luther 
does  not  gain  by  his  biographer’s  tenderness  on  this  head,  and 
the  same  process  which  cuts  off  the  irregularities  narrows  the 
expanse  and  tames  the  freedom  of  character. 

M.  Audin  has,  as  might  be  expected,  inserted  a  good  many 
of  the  touches  which  M.  d’Aubigne’s  pencil  left  out.  Nor, 
though  highly  relishing  his  task,  has  he  performed  it  ill- tern - 
peredly.  His  unfairness  is  not  a  malicious  one  ;  he  delights  in 
the  amiable  tasks  of  the  favourist,  and  extols  all  his  friends 


Luther. 


323 


with  innocent  audacity,  the  notorious  Tetzel  among  the  rest ; 
but  he  is  not  harsh  and  vituperative  to  opponents.  He  only 
gives,  however,  the  more  active  and  fiery  parts  of  the  Beformer’s 
character,  and  not  the  whole  of  it,  and  describes  Luther’s  ex¬ 
ternal  career  better  than  Luther  himself. 

M.  Michelet’s  Life  hardly  professes  to  be  more  than  a  crude 
and  straggling  performance,  its  composition  having  been  the 
amusement  of  the  writer  during  an  illness.  It  consists  princi¬ 
pally  of  passages  strung  together  from  the  table-talk,  and  those 
parts  of  Luther’s  writings  where  the  Beformer  speaks  of  him¬ 
self.  M.  Michelet  stands  idly  by  and  gives  the  reader  no 
assistance.  An  admiration  of  Luther’s  greatness,  sympathy 
with  his  genial  flow  of  spirits,  and  amusement  at  his  faults  and 
extravagances,  compose,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  the  feeling  of  the 
impartial  biographer  toward  his  hero,  and  the  sceptic  seems 
to  gaze  with  quiet  pleasure  upon  the  medley  which  the  reli¬ 
gious  leader,  saint,  and  prophet  of  so  many  millions  of  Chris¬ 
tians  exhibits. 

The  mode  in  which  Luther  is  introduced  to  our  notice  in 
the  pages  of  national  history  creates, an  impression  of  him  as 
primarily  a  practical,  rather  than  a  doctrinal,  reformer.  He 
comes  before  us  suddenly  as  the  opponent  of  some  great  prac¬ 
tical  abuses  in  the  Church ;  we  connect  him,  in  the  first  in¬ 
stance,  with  the  resistance  to  indulgences.  We  thus  picture  a 
doctrinal  movement  as  arising  in  process  of  time  out  of  a  prac¬ 
tical  one,  and  Luther  appears  one  of  those  rough,  energetic 
minds  which,  only  alive  at  first  to  the  palpable  and  tangible, 
gradually  advance  to  the  department  of  opinion  and  belief. 
This  is  undoubtedly  true  of  the  multitudes  whom  Luther  moved. 
They  were  moved  in  the  first  instance  by  the  gross  practical 
abuses  in  the  Church,  and  those  supplied  that  groundwork  to 
the  reforming  movement,  without  which  it  could  not  have 
advanced  at  all.  But  it  is  not  true  of  Luther.  If  there  are 
two  classes  of  influential  men  in  the  world,  great  practical  men, 
and  men  who  propagate  ideas,  Luther  belonged  in  the  first  in¬ 
stance  to  the  latter.  His  mind  was  full  of  an  idea,  and  he 
wished  to  propagate  it.  National  history  brings  us  across  him 
for  the  first  time  engaged  in  a  particular  practical  movement, 


324 


Lilt  her. 


but  his  biography  shows  that  the  doctrinal  was  then  already 
begun  and  in  progress. 

The  process  by  which  leading  ideas  are  arrived  at  is  gene¬ 
rally  that  of  doubt  and  perplexity.  A  particular  class  of  minds 
feels  strongly  the  difficulties  which  surround  the  whole  sub¬ 
ject  of  morality  and  religion.  Some  have  one  difficulty,  and 
some  another.  They  dwell  upon  the  obstacles  to  their  internal 
peace  with  an  intensity  natural  or  morbid  as  may  be,  and  after 
they  have  brooded  long  enough  they  hit  on  a  solution.  This 
solution  is  then  the  idea  which  occupies  and  fills  their  minds. 
They  have  felt  a  want,  and  they  have  relieved  it ;  they  have 
put  their  question,  and  had  their  answer ;  they  have  been  in 
suspense,  and  now  are  settled.  They  prize  the  new  conviction 
because  it  succeeds  to  so  much  indefiniteness  and  void.  The 
search  has  enhanced  the  discovery,  the  toil  the  reward,  and  the 
offspring  of  mental  troubles  is  loved  as  an  only  child.  The  idea 
which  has  destroyed  a  difficulty  is  a  victorious  champion  on 
which  the  mind  reposes  ever  after,  and  to  which  it  refers  all  of 
system,  adjustment,  and  completeness  it  has  attained  to. 

Luther  had  a  natural  character,  which  made  him  strongly 
alive  to  difficulties ;  that  is  to  say,  a  character  which  partook 
largely  of  melancholy.  Dante,  Cromwell,  Dr.  Johnson,  Cow- 
per,  Eousseau,  Lord  Byron,  Shelley,  are  instances  of  men  who, 
in  their  different  ways,  high  or  low,  religious  or  sceptical,  un¬ 
couth  or  refined,  were  melancholy  men.  Luther  was  one  of 
this  class  of  men.  He  had  a  mind  intently  self-contemplative 
and  profoundly  unquiet,  which,  except  the  strongest  active 
occupations  diverted  it,  preyed  upon  itself,  scrutinised  its  own 
faith,  feelings,  fears,  and  hopes,  pried  into  the  mysteries  of  its 
own  nature,  and  provoked  internal  dissatisfactions  and  struggles. 
Luther  speaks  of  his  great  scenes  of  trial  as  being  through¬ 
out  life  internal.  His  agonies,  his  temptations,  his  colloquies 
with  himself  or  with  Satan,  the  tenderest  controversy  and  the 
most  formidable  disputant,  were  always  within  him.  He  had 
just  that  disposition  on  which  particular  difficulties,  and  the 
ideas  which  seem  to  solve  them,  lay  remarkable  hold. 

The  opening  circumstances  of  Luther’s  life  were  not  calcu¬ 
lated  to  discourage  or  tame  such  a  disposition.  The  calm  of  a 


Luther. 


325 


restless  spirit  is  activity ;  and  quiet  unsettles  and  agitates  it. 
The  retirement  and  dulness  of  the  Augustine  monastery  at 
Wittenberg  threw  him  the  more  upon  himself  and  his  own 
thoughts.  The  particular  circumstances  of  his  entrance  into 
monastic  life  were  also  trying.  A  stroke  of  lightning  which 
killed  his  bosom  friend  by  his  side,  according  to  some  writers, 
though  others  make  the  thunderstorm  and  the  death  of  Alexis 
two  different  events,  inspired  him  with  sudden  terror.  A  lively, 
joyous  temperament  was  also  most  alive  to  calls ;  and  possessed 
a  power  of  forming  sudden  strong  resolutions.  He  was  able,  in 
a  moment,  to  change  the  prospects  of  a  life ;  a  vow  uttered  on 
the  spot  dedicated  him  to  monasticism  ;  and  the  accomplished, 
philosophical,  literary  academician,  the  favourite  of  fellow- 
students  who  enjoyed  his  humour,  and  of  scientific  professors 
who  predicted  his  greatness,  called  his  friends  together,  enjoyed 
an  evening  of  brilliant  conversation  and  music,  and  the  next 
morning  knocked  at  the  gate  of  the  Augustine  monastery,  which 
closed  after  him.  But  the  young  devotee  was  not  made  a  monk 
by  the  change.  The  constant  interruptions  of  formal  prayer 
were  irksome  to  him ;  he  did  not  stomach  the  household 
monastic  tasks  he  was  set  to, — tasks,  indeed,  needlessly  humili¬ 
ating  and  offensive ;  and,  if  intended  to  correct  the  fastidiousness 
of  his  previous  education,  arguing  a  blundering,  however  well- 
meaning,  discipline  in  the  monastery.  Luther  felt  himself,  in 
addition  to  the  ordinary  confinements  and  privations  of  a 
monastic  life,  to  be  among  inferior  and  unsympathising  minds ; 
alone,  suspected,  and  ill-used. 

There  was  another  and  more  direct  cause  which  led  to  reli¬ 
gious  melancholy  and  difficulties.  Luther  had  ardent  aspira¬ 
tions  after  the  perfect  and  saintly  character.  There  is  not  the 
•  smallest  reason  for  doubting,  not  only  his  sincerity,  but  his 
strength  of  will,  and  readiness  to  endure  the  greatest  self-denial 
and  mortification  in  pursuit  of  that  character.  But,  impatient 
of  regular  discipline  and  routine,  the  more  simple  and  external 
motive  of  obedience  for  leading  a  holy  life  was  supplied  in 
liis  case  by  a  motive  of  another  stamp.  He  had,  what  has  been 
a  frequent  feature,  though  never  a  very  sound  one,  in  reli¬ 
gionists,  an  active,  not  to  say  fidgety,  desire  for  a  state  of 


326 


Luther. 


conscious  and  palpable  peace  of  mind.  He  was  ambitious  of 
inward  satisfaction,  tbe  sensation  of  spiritual  completeness. 
His  devotion  was  based  upon  a  direct  aim  at  this  result.  He 
pursued  it  vehemently  by  ascetic  means.  He  fasted,  prayed, 
watched  long  and  rigorously.  “  Often  on  returning  to  his  cell 
he  knelt  at  the  foot  of  the  bed,  and  remained  there  until  day¬ 
break.”  His  asceticism,  mingling  with  the  internal  fever  and 
tumult  of  his  mind,  gave  him  an  unnatural  strength  ;  and  he 
relates  that  “  once  for  a  whole  fortnight  he  neither  ate,  drank, 
nor  slept.”  His  health  gave  way  before  such  severities :  from 
being  fresh  and  plump  he  became  pale  and  emaciated,  and  was 
brought  almost  to  death’s  door.  One  little  fact  shows  the 
remarkable  union  of  great  irregularity  in  religion  with  a  morbid 
aim  at  perfectness.  He  would  omit  his  daily  breviary  prayers 
for  long  periods  ;  then,  when  his  conscience  smote  him,  he 
would  make  good  the  default  with  literal  exactness,  and  scrupu¬ 
lously  go  through,  in  one  continuous  act,  the  precise  amount  of 
devotions  he  had  omitted.  That  is  to  say,  he  was  not  satisfied 
with  the  feeling  of  having  done  something  to  atone  for  his  fault; 
he  wanted  the  feeling  of  having  annihilated  the  fault  itself, 
and  put  himself  exactly  into  his  original  state  as  he  stood 
before  it  was  committed.  In  this  way  Luther  went  on,  seeking 
with  all  the  eagerness  of  direct  effort  an  absolutely  clear  con¬ 
science.  The  pursuit,  of  course,  did  not  succeed.  A  clear 
conscience  was  always  further  off  the  further  he  pursued  it ; 
and  at  the  close  of  each  stage  of  his  devotional  course  he  was 
as  discontented  with  himself  as  when  he  began.  “  At  the  foot 
of  the  altar,  his  hands  clasped,  his  eyes  full  of  tears,”  he  prayed 
for  peace,  and  found  none.  “  One  morning,  the  door  of  his  cell 
not  being  open  as  usual,  the  brethren  became  alarmed ;  they 
knocked,  and  there  was  no  reply.  The  door  was  burst  in,  and 
Fra  Martin  was  found  stretched  on  the  ground,  in  a  state  of 
ecstasy,  scarcely  breathing,  and  well-nigh  dead.”  At  the  sight 
of  the  Holy  Sacrament  borne  in  a  procession,  “  he  perspired  at 
every  pore,  and  thought  he  should  die  of  fear.”  Vexed,  wearied, 
harassed,  and  faint,  his  mind  fell  a  prey  to  a  formidable  diffi¬ 
culty  to  which  its  labours  and  aspirations  had  introduced  it. 

There  is  one  apparent  grievance  attaching  to  our  moral 


Z  uther. 


327 

nature,  which  all  who  cultivate  that  nature  with  any  degree  of 
strictness  must  in  a  degree  experience.  It  is  connected  with 
the  operations  of  conscience.  However  we  might  he  led  before¬ 
hand,  by  considerations  of  the  general  nature  of  moral  good¬ 
ness,  to  expect  that  goodness  would  produce  internal  satisfaction 
and  self-approval,  we  find  that,  as  a  matter  of  experience,  it 
fails  to  produce  this.  Conscience  does  not  allow  of  such 
sensations.  Good  acts  leave  the  soul  as  they  found  it,  uneasy 
and  discontented  with  itself,  and  under  a  sense  of  sin,  even  as 
regards  the  performance  of  those  very  acts  themselves.  Within 
the  world  of  experience  good  acts  disappoint.  They  do  not 
accomplish  their  natural  end,  and  fulfil  their  essential  promise. 
Moral  beings  yearn  for  self-approval :  they  feel  the  absence  of 
it  as  a  void  and  a  pain :  they  are  told  to  act  virtuously,  and 
that  they  will  have  it ;  hut  they  do  act  virtuously,  and  self¬ 
approval  does  not  come.  Virtue  seems  to  stand  them  in  no 
stead,  and  do  them  no  service  here :  they  might  as  well  he 
vicious.  The  greatest  sinner,  the  greatest  saint,  are  equidistant 
from  the  goal  where  the  mind  rests  in  satisfaction  with  itself. 
All  approach  to  that  point  labours  under  some  inherent  contra¬ 
diction  :  all  progress  is  a  standstill :  all  impetus  and  deter¬ 
mination  spend  themselves  within  the  circles  of  a  mathematical 
necessity :  the  eager  will  shoots  forward,  hut  the  laws  of  the 
moral  world  are  firm,  and  unseen  impossibility  makes  its 
appearance  in  results.  The  defect  is  not  one  resulting  from 
the  degree  of  their  virtue  :  no  tendency  in  the  universal  quality, 
to  meet  the  craving  for  such  self-approval,  appears.  The 
tendency  is  the  other  way,  and  with  the  growth  in  goodness 
grows  the  sense  of  sin.  One  law  fulfilled  shows  a  thousand 
neglected ;  and  virtue,  as  it  really  advances,  recedes  more  and 
more,  in  our  own  contemplation  of  it,  into  the  position  of  one  weak 
and  poor  particle  struggling  amid  a  mass  of  evil  in  the  character. 
Moral  advancement,  as  a  natural  consequence,  destroys  the 
sense  of  merit,  and  produces  that  of  sin ;  and  thus,  as  a  natural 
consequence,  it  seems  to  defeat  itself. 

This  unkindly  effect  of  goodness,  moreover,  if  it  is  such,  is 
not  kept  out  of  sight  in  Scripture,  but  put  prominently  forward, 
and  suggested  to  us.  Tor  real  goodness  is  in  many  passages 


328 


Luther. 


there  actually  and  in  the  most  marked  way  tested,  by  its  pro¬ 
ducing  just  the  contradictory  impression  to  that  of  goodness,  in 
the  individual’s  own  conscience.  Indeed,  so  determinately  is 
this  contradictory  consequence  attached  to  and  made  the  natural 
consequence  of  the  state  of  goodness,  that  by  a  strong  figure  of 
speech  the  holy  text  sometimes  puts  the  consequence  of  the  state 
for  the  state  itself,  and  speaks  of  righteousness  as  if  it  were 
sin ;  just  as  it,  on  the  other  hand,  speaks  of  sin  as  if  it  were 
righteousness.  And  a  whole  line  of  expression  meets  us  from 
which  one  would  at  first  sight  suppose  that  sinners  were  actual 
favourites  of  God  as  such ;  and  that,  on  the  contrary,  the 
righteous  were  not  at  all  pleasing  to  Him.  There  is  a  coldness 
in  the  remarks  about  the  righteous,  as  if  God  were  angry  with 
them  because,  persisting  in  their  original  integrity,  they  did  not 
give  Him  the  opportunity  of  exercising  His  sovereign  free  grace 
and  pity  toward  them  :  sinners,  on  the  other  hand,  are  dearly 
loved,  because  they  give  Him  this  opportunity ;  they  have  His 
affections,  on  the  principle  which  prevails  in  the  sphere  of 
ordinary  human  feeling,  that  “  pity  is  akin  to  love  ;  ”  whereas 
those  who  are  independent  of  us,  and  ask  nothing  from  us,  we 
do  not  care  for.  “  They  that  are  whole  need  not  a  physician, 
but  they  that  are  sick.”  “  I  came  not  to  call  the  righteous,  but 
sinners  to  repentance.”  “  There  is  joy  in  the  presence  of  the 
angels  of  God,  over  one  sinner  that  repenteth,  more  than  over 
ninety  and  nine  just  persons  which  need  no  repentance.”  “  Her 
sins,  which  are  many,  are  forgiven  her,  for  she  loved  much  : 
but  to  whom  little  is  forgiven  the  same  loveth  little :  ”  thus 
the  parable  of  the  lost  sheep ;  the  parable  of  the  lost  piece  of 
money ;  the  parable  of  the  lost  son.  All  these  parables  create 
at  first  sight  the  impression  of  it  being  an  actual  advantage  to 
be  lost  and  to  be  a  sinner,  something  to  be  coveted  and  sought 
after  with  all  our  might.  The  reader  naturally  immediately 
thinks  that  he  had  much  rather  be  the  sheep  that  was  lost  than 
one  of  those  that  had  never  gone  astray ;  and  had  much  rather 
be  the  son  who  had  wandered,  and  was  greeted  on  his  return 
with  such  an  overflow  of  affection,  than  the  son  who  had  never 
wandered,  and  had  no  such  greeting.  Now  it,  of  course,  is 
absurd  to  suppose  that  actual  sin  is  pleasing  to  God,  actual 


Luther . 


329 


righteousness  not  pleasing  to  Him  ;  indeed,  we  know  from  the 
context  that  the  “  righteous  ”  to  whom  our  Lord  alludes  were 
actually  the  most  wicked  of  mankind,  viz.,  the  Pharisees  who 
crucified  Him, — men  who  could  only  he  righteous  in  the  sense 
of  being  righteous  in  their  own  eyes.  The  feeling  of  being 
sinful  and  the  feeling  of  being  righteous,  then,  are,  under  the 
expressions  sin  and  righteousness,  the  real  things  which  God 
respectively  praises  and  blames.  Still  the  language  is  very 
remarkable,  as  fixing  in  such  a  direct  and  summary  way  this 
contradictory  effect  upon  goodness.  I11  the  Gospel  self-approval 
appears  as  something  signally  unfit  for  the  creature  ;  enormous, 
abominable,  and  contra  Deum.  It  appears  as  the  mark  of  the 
beast,  the  sign,  where  it  exists,  that  the  soul  has  departed  from 
God,  and  relapsed  into  its  own  vile,  dead,  and  selfish  nature. 
There  is  a  happiness,  indeed,  which  belongs  to  conscious  merit, 
soberly  expecting  its  reward  in  the  course  of  nature,  of  which 
the  whole -day’s  labourer  waiting  for  his  wages  is  the  exemplar  ; 
and  uninstructed  reason  fixes  on  that  as  the  happiness  of  the 
saint.  But  the  Gospel,  in  describing  the  joy  of  the  rewarded  saint, 
has  recourse  to  a  very  different  type.  It  refers  us  to  those  inde¬ 
scribable  emotions  which  seize  the  mind  upon  any  sudden  rescue 
from  evil,  which  it  has  no  right  to  expect.  The  parables  of  the  lost 
piece  of  money,  and  the  lost  sheep,  and  the  lost  son,  all  appeal 
to  this  type  of  joy;  and  intimate  the  great  superiority  of  the 
pleasures  of  this  type  to  those  of  the  former,  as  having,  from 
the  very  nature  of  the  case,  so  much  more  liveliness  and  depth 
in  them ;  the  sensations  of  possession  and  safety  necessarily 
having  an  acme  and  intensity  after  loss  and  danger  which  they 
could  not  have  had  before.  Bor  the  reward  of  goodness,  then, 
the  Gospel  gives  us  a  pleasure  of  this  type ;  that  is  to  say,  it 
gives  not  the  peace  of  self-approval  but  the  joy  of  pardon  :  the 
most  accepted  man  has,  by  some  mystery,  most  sins  forgiven, 
and  his  happiness  lies  in  that  forgiveness.  Philosophy  of  old 
dreamed,  indeed,  of  the  happiness  of  conscious  virtue  ;  and  the 
“  memory  of  a  well-spent  life”  filled  its  disciples  with  serene 
thoughts,  and  bade  them  look  for  the  rewards  of  self-discipline 
in  the  act  of  self- contemplation.  The  wise  man  looked  within 
himself  and  was  satisfied  ;  the  world  without  was  wild,  but  he 


Luther . 


33° 

was  tranquil,  balanced,  and  perfect.  He  had  always  a  retro¬ 
spect  which  consoled,  and  a  conscience  which  supported  him. 
He  had  done  well,  and  was  recompensed ;  he  had  worked,  and 
he  had  his  wages  ;  and  he  received  his  reward  with  the  dignity 
and  self-possession  which  belongs  to  one  who  enjoys  a  right. 
Self-approval  was  the  prcemium  virtutis  of  ancient  philosophy. 
Most  natural  ambition.  But  how  roughly  did  Christianity 
break  these  morning  slumbers  of  the  wise  and  good  !  “  Awake, 

thou  that  sleepest,  and  arise  from  the  dead,  and  Christ  shall 
give  thee  light.”  The  dream  was  dispelled,  and  man  awoke  to 
real  life  and  facts;  he  was  shown  himself,  and  saw  what  he 
had  never  seen  before — a  feeble  will,  effort  always  short, 
struggle  ending  in  self-contempt,  and  virtue  never  got,  but 
always  to  be  attained.  The  mystery  of  conscience  was  revealed ; 
and  he  discovered  that  he  had  done  nothing,  had  secured  no 
standing  ground.  From  the  yawning  pit  he  reached  forth  a 
hand  as  he  was  sinking ;  it  was  caught,  and  he  was  saved. 
Then  followed  a  pleasure,  in  comparison  with  which  all  that 
his  philosophy  had  offered  him  was  nothing — the  pleasure  of 
rescue.  The  Gospel  destroyed  one  set  of  satisfactions,  but  re¬ 
placed  them  with  a  higher.  For  the  calmness  and  repose  of 
self-approval,  there  was  the  intense,  quick,  miraculous  delight 
of  pardon ;  for  human  satisfaction  there  was  superhuman,  and 
for  the  order  of  nature  the  mystery  of  grace. 

The  inevitable  tendency  of  human  goodness,  then,  being  to 
produce  the  sense  of  sin,  it  is  to  be  remarked  next,  that  such 
sense  of  sin  is  not  the  same  with  the  common  ordinary  feeling 
so  called,  that  is,  with  remorse  and  a  bad  conscience.  A  good 
action  produces  a  sense  of  sin  indeed,  and  a  bad  action  does  ; 
but  it  would  be  absurd  to  say,  that  the  feeling  in  the  mind 
after  performing  a  good  action  was  exactly  the  same  with  the 
feeling  after  performing  a  bad  one.  In  the  one  case  the  con¬ 
science  is  displeased  with  the  action  as  simply  bad;  in  the 
other  case  it  is  displeased  with  it  because  it  falls  short  of 
absolute  good.  That  sense  of  sin  which  grows  with  advance 
in  goodness  is  less  properly  the  sense  of  sin  than  the  sense  of 
imperfection.  The  sense  of  imperfection  is  a  feeling  quite 
strong  enough  for  the  occasion,  quite  sufficient,  that  is,  to 


Luther . 


33i 


explain  and  account  for  the  class  of  painful  and  humiliating 
sensations  which  have  to  be  accounted  for ;  for  imperfection  is 
quasi  sin,  and  affects  the  mind  in  a  way  somewhat  similar  and 
cognate  to  that  in  which  actual  sin  does.  The  sense  of  it  is 
galling,  painful,  humiliating,  just  as  the  sense  of  sin  is.  Let 
any  one  examine,  by  a  reference  to  his  own  feelings  and  ex¬ 
perience,  what  the  peculiar  effect  of  imperfection  upon  the 
mind  is.  Its  effect  is  to  spoil  anything  done  as  an  object  of 
regard  and  contemplation.  ISTor  is  this  the  case  in  morals  only, 
but  in  art,  science,  literature.  It  is  so  much  the  constitution 
of  the  human  mind  to  seek  finish  and  completeness,  that  any 
falling  short  of  that  is  a  disappointment  which  it  cannot  get 
over.  The  end  is  the  test  of  true  being  ;  and  things  only  really 
are,  when  they  are  finished, — are  perfect.  The  work  which  falls 
short  of  that  point  is  only  an  embryo  of  a  work  :  and,  the  vertex 
of  perfection  once  conceived  in  the  mind,  all  below  is  confused, 
chaotic,  formless.  Take  any  artistic  creation  of  our  minds — a 
book,  a  drawing,  a  building,  a  mechanical  contrivance — we  were 
absolutely  pleased  with  it  so  long  as  we  thought  it  perfect,  that 
is  to  say,  so  long  as  we  did  not  realise  any  definite  falling  short 
in  it.  But  let  a  definite  falling  short  be  once  seen,  and  let  us 
once  have  in  our  mind  a  clear  image  of  the  work  more  perfect 
than  we  have  made  it,  and  that  complacency  goes.  As  an 
object  of  contemplation  our  work  is  marred,  it  offends  us,  and 
we  eject  it  from  our  thoughts,  and  think  no  more  of  it  than  we 
can  help.  We  betake  ourselves  to  the  future  indeed,  and  to 
that  hope  which  happily  no  experience  can  ever  defeat,  that  the 
next  thing  we  do  will  be  satisfactory ;  but  the  thing  done  is 
defaced,  the  past  is  taken  from  us.  Such  is  the  law  of  a  nature 
which  aspires  to  perfection.  The  point  rises  higher  and  higher, 
throwing  disaster  and  defeat  upon  all  below  it.  It  is  the  same 
in  morals  :  an  action  is  in  morals  what  a  work  of  art,  or  a  com¬ 
position,  is  in  art  and  literature.  Take  any  action,  or  course 
of  action,  however  conscientious,  nay,  heroic  ;  it  ceases  to  be  an 
object  of  satisfactory  contemplation  as  soon  as  ever  the  mind 
realises  a  definite  better,  which  it  could  and  ought  to  have  been. 
Thus,  suppose  an  extraordinary  act  in  one  of  the  religious 
departments  of  prayer,  fasting,  or  charity.  An  ascetic  wor- 


332 


L  uther. 


shipper  stays  on  his  knees  for  hours  ;  he  stays  till  his  mind  is 
painfully  wearied  and  exhausted.  But  free  will  is  strong,  and 
could  keep  him  there  longer  if  he  exerted  it  sufficiently. 
Nevertheless  the  desire  for  relief  prevails,  and  he  rises,  either 
to  recreate  or  to  rest  himself.  Now  certainly  he  has  performed 
a  religious  act  of  some  difficulty,  and  might  so  far  feel  self¬ 
approval  ;  hut  then  arises  the  uncomfortable  consciousness  that 
he  has  wilfully  curtailed  it.  The  act  immediately  loses  its 
wholeness,  and  the  wilful  stopping  short  is  more  annoying  than 
the  advance  up  to  that  point  is  satisfactory.  The  sin  of  not 
having  done  more,  spoils  the  goodness  of  having  done  so  much  ; 
indulged  frailty  and  infirmity  vex  and  occupy  the  conscience, 
and  the  consequence  is,  that  he  has  more  of  the  feeling  of  sin 
than  if  he  had  never  done  the  act  to  begin  with.  It  would  be 
the  same  in  any  other  religious  department.  Imagine  this 
sense  of  imperfection  deepening  and  enlarging,  eating  into  the 
core  of  every  good  act,  and  spoiling  and  defacing  in  proportion 
to  the  extent  of  that  material  which  virtuous  effort  supplies  it 
to  deface  ;  and  we  have  before  us  the  progress  of  that  peculiar 
sense  of  sin  which  grows  with  the  advance  in  goodness. 

Imperfection,  then,  being  the  cause  of  that  sense  of  sin 
which  accompanies  good  works,  the  view  which  we  take  of  such 
good  works,  in  consequence  of  such  sinfulness  attaching  to 
them,  depends  on  the  view  we  take  of  imperfection.  Now 
there  is  one  view  of  imperfection,  which,  fully  recognising  the 
faultiness  and  defectiveness  which  must  attach  to  every  im¬ 
perfect  production  as  such,  and  even  allowing  the  rigid  defini¬ 
tion  of  true  existence  to  be  perfection,  still  leaves  an  imperfect 
production  a  something,  and  does  not  wholly  annihilate  it. 
With  respect  to  the  subject  before  us,  such  a  view  refuses  to 
pronounce  of  the  goodness  of  man’s  works,  that  because  it  is 
imperfect,  it  is  therefore  no  goodness  at  all,  and  to  deprive  it 
of  all  cognisableness.  According  to  it,  there  are  in  the  con¬ 
stitution  of  things  approaches  and  tendencies  as  well  as 
completions.  These  works  are  not  nothing,  because  they  are 
not  all ;  nor  because  they  are  infinitely  distant  from  infinite 
goodness  are  they  reduced  to  an  equality  with  absolute  station- 
ariness.  Space  is  infinite,  and  yet  there  is  a  difference  between 


Luther . 


333 


a  yard  and  a  mile.  Time  is  infinite,  and  yet  an  hour  is  longer 
than  a  minute.  On  a  line  which  travels  from  a  given  goal 
into  infinity  one  may  proceed  no  way  at  all,  another  a  short 
way,  another  a  longer  way.  The  merest  reaching  forward  of 
the  human  soul  towards  goodness  is  a  moral  something; 
approaches  are  cognisable,  measureable,  appreciable  things. 
In  the  confessed  absence  of  the  absolute  attribute,  an  inferior 
and  subordinate  goodness  is  thus  saved  for  human  works, 
and  something  of,  or  belonging  to,  the  nature  of  goodness  is 
left  in  them.  And  this  view  of  imperfection  is  the  one  which 
the  conscience  itself  takes.  That  displeasure  at  defect  and 
shortcoming,  however  real  and  however  disturbing,  which 
grows  with  advance  in  goodness,  is  not  after  all  unaccompanied 
with  another  and  a  pleasing  kind  of  consciousness.  Though 
it  is  a  part  of  truth  to  call  conscience  insatiable  and  self- con¬ 
demning,  it  is  not  the  whole  of  it.  If  it  condemns  on  one 
side,  it  justifies  on  another.  It  censures  and  it  commends  in 
one  and  the  same  act  of  reflection.  The  human  soul  is 
such  a  marvellous,  many-sided,  and  intricate  creation,  that  no 
one  line  of  observation  can  do  it  justice  or  represent  it  fairly. 
Peace  and  disappointment  mingle,  and  tempered  oppositions 
compose  the  soul’s,  as  they  do  the  body’s,  health.  Eising 
satisfaction  feels  the  drawback ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  even 
in  the  lowest  abasements  and  self-condemnations  of  a  true 
saint,  there  is  a  latent  confidence  arising  out  of  his  own  works. 
If  conscience  accuses  too  harshly,  conscience  itself  is  judged 
for  doing  so,  and  a  higher  conscience  steps  in.  “  If  our  heart 
condemn  us,  God  is  greater  than  our  heart.”  “Yea,  I  judge 
not  mine  own  self.”  Though  conscience  will  not  let  us  feed 
on  its  satisfactions,  it  gives  us  a  taste  of  them,  and  allows 
something  which  is,  and  is  not,  self-approval.  Thus  it  is 
absurd  to  say  that  a  good  life  is  to  produce  no  consolatory  and 
joyful  reflections  whatever  in  the  retrospect.  “  I  have  fought 
a  good  fight,”  says  St.  Paul,  “  I  have  kept  the  faith  ;  henceforth 
there  is  laid  up  for  me  a  crown  of  righteousness.”  The  same 
Scripture  which  so  sternly  rebukes  a  proud  self- approval, 
directs  us,  nevertheless,  to  a  certain  state  of  mind  which  it 
calls  a  “  conscience  void  of  offence,”  and  allows  the  true-hearted 


334 


Luther. 


and  honest  soul,  amid  the  reproach  of  an  ungodly  world,  to 
vindicate  itself,  and  find  consolation  in  the  consciousness  of 
its  own  truth  and  integrity.  “  I  have  not  dwelt  with  vain 
persons,  neither  have  I  had  fellowship  with  the  deceitful.”  “  I 
have  loved  the  habitation  of  thine  house.”  “I  have  had  as 
great  delight  in  the  way  of  thy  testimonies  as  in  all  manner  of 
riches.”  “  0  turn  from  me  shame  and  rebuke,  for  I  have  kept 
thy  testimonies.”  “  I  have  chosen  the  way  of  truth,  and  thy 
judgments  have  I  laid  before  me.”  “  Thy  statutes  have  been 
my  songs.”  “  I  am  wiser  than  the  aged,  because  I  keep  thy 
commandments.” 

But  Luther  had  thrown  himself  into  a  temper  of  mind 
which  was  not  favourable  to  taking  such  a  via  media  in  the 
estimation  of  good  works.  A  too  ambitious  and  direct  pursuit 
of  spiritual  satisfaction, — a  too  great  longing  for  the  palpable 
and  the  apprehensible  in  religion,  had  over-stimulated  and 
unbalanced  him.  A  morbid  eagerness  for  some  extreme  and 
perfect  state  of  self-approval  and  conscious  elevation,  and  an 
irregular  and  headstrong  asceticism  pursued  for  its  attainment, 
presented  him  unprepared  for  meeting  disappointment ;  and  the 
result  was,  that  when  that  disappointment  came,  as  it  infallibly 
must  come  sooner  or  later,  and  when,  after  an  excited  pursuit, 
the  impossibility  of  the  object  at  last  broke  upon  him,  and  he 
found  that  self- approval  ever  fled,  and  perfection  never  came, 
he  felt  the  vehement  impulse  immediately  of  a  disappointed 
man  to  insist  on  the  very  contrary  extreme.  To  an  impetuous 
nature  the  favourite  alternative  is  all  or  none :  the  work  half 
done  annoys,  and  there  is  a  pleasure  in  effacing  it  altogether. 
As  Luther  could  not  find  a  wholly  approving  conscience,  he 
would  have  a  simply  condemning  one ;  and  as  good  works 
could  not  be  perfect,  he  would  not  have  them  to  be  good  works 
at  all.  A  rigid  definition  of  goodness,  as  perfect  goodness, 
annihilated  at  one  stroke  all  goodness  below  that  point,  because 
it  was  below  it ;  converting  it,  as  if  in  revenge,  into  absolute 
evil.  That  sense  of  sin  which  obedience  created,  and  which 
increased  in  proportion  to  obedience,  was  in  Luthers  retaliatory 
disgust  confounded  with  sin  itself ;  and  the  law,  in  theological 
language,  made  productive  of  sin  only. 


L  ut her . 


335 


Such  was  the  conclusion  to  which  Luther  came ;  its  first 
effect  was  to  make  him  turn  round  with  fierceness  and  hostility 
upon  the  whole  system  of  things  which  maintained  such  a 
balk,  to  a  degree  that  the  character  of  the  Deity  himself  seemed 
at  stake  with  him.  “  Ego  ipse  offendebar ,”  are  his  words,  “  ut 
optarem  nunquam  me  esse  creatum  hominem.”  “  I  was  indig¬ 
nant,  and  gave  silent  utterance  to  murmuring,  if  not  altogether 
to  blasphemy.  I  said  to  myself,  Is  it  not  then  enough  that 
wretched  sinners,  already  damned  for  original  sin,  should  be 
overwhelmed  with  so  many  miseries  by  the  decrees  of  the 
Decalogue,'  but  God  must  add  further  misery  to  misery  by  His 
Gospel,  menacing  us  even  there  with  His  justice  and  anger?” 
He  addressed  God  in  the  language  of  offended  Job  :  “  Thou  art 
my  enemy  without  cause.”  “  Jerome,  and  other  fathers,  had 
trials — those  of  the  flesh ;  Augustine  and  Ambrose  had  trials — 
those  of  the  persecuting  sword ;  but  mine  were  far  worse,  they 
came  from  the  angel  of  Satan,  who  strikes  with  the  fist,” 
There  is  nothing  vituperative  or  disparaging  of  Luther,  in 
saying  that  he  had,  in  his  intellectual  nature, — suppressed, 
indeed,  by  a  powerful  though  irregular  faith, — an  element  of 
that  sensitive  and  rebellious  temperament  which  has  made 
men  before  now  atheists.  Lucretius  saw  a  great  difficulty  in 
the  unsatisfying  nature  of  religion,  i.e.  conscience,  which  he 
accused  of  filling  the  mind  with  horror  and  self-condemnation, 
instead  of  peace  : — 

“  Quag  caput  a  coeli  regionibus  ostendebat 
Horribili  super  aspectu  mortalibus  instans.” 

He  thought  this  must  be  wrong,  and  therefore  denied  the  truth 
of  religion  altogether.  Shelley’s  atheism  was  connected  with 
difficulties  in  the  same  department :  his  whole  nature  rebelled 
against  what  appeared  to  him  to  be  the  issue  of  the  moral 
process  in  the  human  soul : — 

“  And  who  made  terror,  madness,  crime,  remorse, 

Which  from  the  links  of  the  great  chain  of  things, 

To  every  thought  within  the  mind  of  man 
Sway  and  drag  heavily,  and  each  one  reels 
Under  the  load  towards  the  pit  of  death ; 

Abandoned  hope,  and  love  that  turns  to  bate, 

And  self- contempt,  bitterer  to  drink  than  blood.’' 


Lutheir. 


">  'y 

The  more  simple  portion  of  mankind  see  difficulties  only  as 
facts,  and  not  as  difficulties ;  every  stoppage  is  only  their  natu¬ 
ral  resting-place,  their  minds  exactly  fit  in  with  facts,  and  feel 
no  pressure.  But  others  cannot  see  a  difficulty  without  seeing 
its  bearing ;  a  subtle  thread  connects  it  immediately  with  their 
central  faith,  the  responsibility  is  thrown  back  upon  the  foun¬ 
dation,  and  the  whole  system  to  which  it  attaches  feels  the 
challenge.  All  the  world  sees  the  existence  of  evil,  but  there 
is  every  shade  of  perception  of  it  as  a  difficulty,  from  that 
temper  of  mind  which  does  not  see  it  as  a  difficulty  at  all,  to  that 
of  those  with  whom  it  shakes  the  very  throne  of  God  Himself. 
Luther,  who  now  saw  a  difficulty  of  nature  in  the  artificial  and 
exaggerated  strength  which  a  theory  of  his  own  had  given  it, 
felt  the  effect  of  his  own  work ;  and  that  state  of  absolute  evil 
in  man  which  a  gratuitously  rigid  definition  of  goodness  had 
imposed,  agitated  and  puzzled  him.  He  pictured  miserable 
man  vainly  fighting  with  a  stern  and  inexorable  impossibility, 
which  excluded  him  from  ever  attaining  that  chief  good  to  the 
pursuit  of  which  his  nature  impelled  him ;  and  the  whole 
construction  of  the  human  soul,  which  imposed  toil  and  agony 
and  rewarded  with  self- contempt,  was  a  scandal.  The  in¬ 
satiableness  of  the  law,  the  law  of  conscience,  was  a  grievance 
in  the  constitution  of  things  :  “  The  more  you  try  to  fulfil  it, 
the  more  you  will  transgress  it.”  “  You  accumulate  law  upon 
law,  and  all  issues  but  in  miserable  self-torture  and  pain.  Una 
lex  gignit  alias  decern — one  law  begets  ten  more,  till  they 
mount  up  to  infinity “  The  stone  of  Sisyphus  ever  rolls,  the 
vessel  of  the  Danaides  never  fills.”  With  a  Manichean  inten¬ 
sity  he  insisted  upon  the  absolute  evil  of  all  visible  and  per¬ 
ceptible  nature.  The  sun  was  darkness,  and  the  moon  refused 
to  give  her  light,  and  the  stars  of  heaven  were  extinguished. 
“  In  man  and  in  the  devil  spiritual  things  were  extinct.”  A 
fierce  hatred  of  the  world  rose  up,  of  this  whole  visible  system 
of  things,  as  so  much  pure  evil — “  a  world  of  dread  and  ruin,  of 
sin,  and  anger,  and  judgment,  where  is  nothing  celestial,  nothing 
divine ;  which  is  nothing  else  but  the  kingdom  of  the  devil,  a 
flood  of  death,  hell,  sin,  and  all  evils  oppressing  quaking,  miser¬ 
able  man.”  “  Do  what  thou  wilt,  tu  es  in  hoc  seculo  neguam , 


L  uther . 


337 


thou  art  in  this  wicked  world,  this  world  which  is  darkness, 
not  is  in  darkness,  but  is  darkness  itself.”  Luther  s  language 
after  he  had  arrived  at  his  explanation  of  this  evil,  shows  how 
it  must  have  worked  upon  him  before.  Throughout  his  writings 
there  come  up  continually  traces  of  a  state  of  mind  which  had 
seen  something  really  wrong,  and  to  be  complained  of,  in  the 
constitution  of  things ;  and  his  forms  of  expression  edge  with  a 
venturesome  nicety  upon,  without  actually  touching,  the  justice 
of  the  Deity.  In  his  book  De  Servo  Arbitrio  a  fatalist  line  of 
thought  brings  him  into  contact  with  this  awful  subject,  and 
he  describes  the  Deity  as  “  though  not  making  sin,”  yet,  as  if 
it  were  the  next  thing  to  it,  “  not  ceasing  to  make  and  multiply 
natures  vitiated  by  sin,  natures  from  which  He  has  withdrawn 
His  Spirit.”1  The  expression  has  the  effect  of  bringing  the 
Divine  mind  into  some  kind  of  vicinity  to  the  production  of 
evil,  and  throwing  a  responsibility  upon  it  on  that  head ;  as  if, 
though  God  did  not  create  the  principle  of  evil  in  the  first 
instance,  He  voluntarily  concreted  it,  and  gave  it  that  teeming 
and  multitudinous  life  which  it  has  in  the  existence  of  innu¬ 
merable  individual  evil  beings.  Nor  does  Luther  disguise  the 
peculiar  trial  to  his  faith  which  this  department  of  speculation 
brings  :  “  liic  fidei  summus  gradus  credere  justum  gui  sua  volun- 
tcite  nos  necessario  damnabiles  facit” 

Such  passionate  and  semi-sceptical  thoughts  cleared  away, 
but  only  to  leave  Luther  confronting,  in  their  place,  a  most 
grave  difficulty  of  Christian  doctrine ;  for,  upon  the  dogma  of 
the  absolute  evil  of  man  s  goodness,  a  great  difficulty  immedi¬ 
ately  arises  with  respect  to  the  doctrine  of  justification.  How 
was  man  ever  to  be  justified,  and  become  acceptable  to  God, 
being,  as  he  was,  simply  evil  ?  The  fundamental  teaching  of 
natural  religion  is,  that  man  must  recommend  himself  to  God 
by  some  or  other  goodness,  bona  fide  belonging  to  him  :  indeed, 
such  a  truth  is  no  more  than  a  mode  of  stating  what  natural 
religion  is.  The  fundamental  teaching  of  the  Church  Catholic 
has  been  the  same :  that  is  to  say,  the  Church  has  always  ad- 

1  “Licet  enim  Dens  peccatum  non  faciat,  tamen  naturam  peccato,  sub- 
tracto  Spiritu,  vitiatam,  non  cessat  formare  et  multiplicare,  tanqnam  si  Faber 
ex  ligno  corrupto  statuas  faciat.  Ita  qxialis  est  natnra,  tales  fiunt  homines, 
Deo  creante  et  formante  illos  ex  natura  tali.” — De  Serv.  Arb .,  Op.  vol.  ii.  p.  459. 

m.e.-i.]  y 


338 


Luther. 


mitted  good  works  into  a  regular  place  in  the  process  of  mans 
justification.  But  the  Church  has  been  enabled  to  do  this  from 
the  circumstance  that  she  has  never  annihilated  the  goodness 
of  human  works  on  account  of  their  imperfection.  She  has  all 
along  taken  a  practical  common-sense  ground  on  this  subject, 
and  has  not  allowed  experimental  disappointments  of  conscience, 
or  speculative  difficulties  respecting  infinity  and  perfection,  to 
depreciate  good  works  in  her  eyes.  She  has  never  been  extreme 
and  exigeant,  or  let  her  divines  insist  on  some  impossible 
perfection,  in  order  that  they  may  reduce  all  actions  beneath 
it  to  a  level.  She  has  been  ever  moderate,  gentle,  and  discreet, 
making  allowances,  and  admitting  approximations.  The  Church 
has  therefore  been  enabled  to  maintain,  with  respect  to  man’s 
justification,  all  the  teaching  of  natural  religion,  and  the  whole 
language  of  reason ;  such  as,  that  all  who  do  their  duty  ac¬ 
cording  to  their  light  please  God  in  their  degree ;  that  the 
least  effort,  be  it  only  sincere,  is  acceptable ;  that  all  which, 
upon  fair  consideration,  we  pronounce  to  be  good,  or  to  partake 
of  goodness,  or  to  have  something  or  other  to  do  with  good¬ 
ness,  in  human  conduct,  all  which  is  morally  pleasing  and 
commendable,  is  in  its  measure  pleasing  to  God,  and  tends  to 
make  the  doer  pleasing  to  Him.  But  Luther  annihilated  all 
goodness  in  the  first  instance  because  it  was  imperfect ; — he 
was,  therefore,  deprived  of  goodness  as  the  means  of  justifica¬ 
tion  ;  and  therefore  he  had  the  difficulty  to  solve,  how  man 
could  be  justified  at  all. 

Such  was  the  climax  of  a  long  series  of  mental  perplexities 
and  troubles.  One  great  absorbing  difficulty  brought  them  to 
a  head — a  human  soul  which  was  absolutely  evil,  and  which 
could  not,  therefore,  according  to  any  existing  method,  be 
justified. 

His  difficulty  now  in  clear  and  definite  shape  before  him, 
Luther  had  to  find  a  solution  for  it.  He  found  one  in  the 
doctrine  of  Imputation.  To  compensate  for  his  total  denial 
of  actual  goodness  in  man,  he  threw  himself  upon  the  idea  of 
an  imputed  goodness ;  intensifying  and  pushing  out  the  im¬ 
puted  exactly  to  the  amount  which  his  denial  of  the  actual 
required.  The  act  of  imputation,  considered  in  the  abstract, 


Luther. 


339 


is  of  an  extreme,  simple,  and  arbitrary  character,  depending 
wholly  on  the  imputer,  and  not  at  all  on  the  person  imputed 
to,  and  conferring  the  imputed  thing  or  quality  wholly  irre¬ 
spectively  of  conditions.  As  received  and  entertained,  how¬ 
ever,  in  the  Church  at  large,  this  idea  of  imputation  comes 
before  us  qualified  by  the  conditions  which  natural  religion 
imposes ;  and  as  natural  religion  does  not  allow  of  the  notion 
that  perfect  righteousness  can  be  imputed  by  God  to  men  who 
have  done  nothing  whatever  but  evil,  the  imputation  which  the 
Church  teaches  becomes  necessarily  a  conditional  act,  depend¬ 
ent  on  the  character  of  the  person  to  whom  the  imputation  is 
made.  But  Luther  insisted  on  giving  imputation  the  whole 
unqualified  force  of  the  abstract  idea ;  that  is  to  say,  he  pushed 
it  out  to  the  extent  of  its  being  absolute,  and  irrespective  of 
the  character  of  the  person  the  subject  of  it.  The  one  idea  of 
imputation  thus  entirely  met  the  difficulty  which  he  had  to 
meet ;  for,  whereas  his  difficulty  was  that  man  had  no  good¬ 
ness  by  means  of  which  to  be  justified,  here  was  a  method  of 
justification  which  required  no  goodness  whatever  in  him. 
Here  was  the  principle  pronounced — and  it  was  quite  a  new 
one  in  the  Christian  world, — that  the  goodness  of  the  person 
had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  his  being  accounted  good  by 
God.  Here  was  the  moral  quality  or  character  in  man  alto¬ 
gether  separated  from  his  justification,  declared  to  be  alien  and 
irrelevant,  null  and  void  with  reference  to  it.  “  The  law  was 
abolished,  the  whole  law,  moral  as  well  as  ceremonial,”  and 
had  no  place  or  existence  in  the  scheme  of  reconciliation. 
Luther  had  answered  his  question,  how  man  was  to  be  justi¬ 
fied  ;  and  the  difficulty  of  absolute  evil  on  man’s  part  had  a 
complete  and  triumphant  solution  in  the  doctrine  of  absolute 
imputation  on  God’s. 

We  have  stated  the  fundamental  point  in  Luther’s  system; 
but,  in  order  to  have  a  fuller  idea  of  it,  it  will  be  proper  to  go 
a  little  further,  and  see  it  in  its  working. 

The  righteousness  of  man,  then,  being  a  simply  imputed 
one,  in  contrast  with  an  actual  state  of  absolute  sin,  the  next 
step  in  the  Lutheran  system  was  to  say  that  man  individually 
appropriated  that  righteousness  to  himself,  or  was  individually 


340 


Lzit her. 


justified,  when  the  idea  of  that  imputed  righteousness  wholly 
expelled  and  effaced  the  sense  of  that  actual  sin.  To  achieve 
this  transmutation  was  the  triumph  of  Christianity  in  Luther’s 
view,  and  he  dwells  and  enlarges  on  it  with  untiring  enthu¬ 
siasm.  On  the  one  side  indeed,  was  the  world  actual  and 
cognisable  declared  to  he  wholly  evil ;  human  nature  with  its 
moral  affections,  tastes,  and  power  of  will,  was  so  much  mere 
flesh,  the  flesh  which  the  Gnostic  hated  and  anathematised  ; 
evil,  rotten,  and  hostile  to  God.  The  very  construction  of 
human  nature  was  against  attaining  goodness ;  goodness  being 
always  the  further  off  the  more  it  was  pursued.  Evil  was  evil, 
and  issued  such ;  and  man  “  was  under  the  elements  of  this 
world,”  and  could  not  escape  from  its  bondage.  Such  was  the 
world  actual  and  cognisable  according  to  Luther.  But  his 
next  step  is,  to  tell  us  that  with  that  world  we  have  nothing 
to  do ;  that  all  this  evil  is  absolutely  irrelevant,  and  that  the 
perfect  righteousness  of  Christ  is,  by  imputation,  our  real  state 
and  condition  all  the  time.  This  righteousness  was  indeed 
wholly  external  to  us,  wholly  removed  from  our  nature,  con¬ 
science,  life,  and  being ;  was  in  no  sense  an  attribute  of  our¬ 
selves  ;  we  looked  within  and  did  not  see  it ;  our  spiritual 
perception  itself  did  not  see  it;  it  did  not  appear;  it  was 
nowhere.  Still  it  wTas  ours ;  we  had  it ;  we  were  perfectly 
righteous  with  the  perfect  righteousness  of  Christ.  Intra  con- 
scientiam  Diabolus :  extra  conscientiam  Deus.  Luther  insists 
particularly  on  the  fact  of  this  total  separation  between  our 
life  and  consciousness  and  this  righteousness,  and  also  upon  the 
total  irrelevancy  of  that  fact.  “  Thou,  brother,  wishest  to  have 
visible  righteousness ;  that  is,  thou  wishest  to  feel  righteous¬ 
ness  as  thou  feelest  sin  ;  this  cannot  be.  Thy  justice  must 
transcend  the  sense  of  sin,  and  make  thee  believe  that  thou  art 
righteous  in  God’s  sight.  Thy  justice  is  not  visible,  is  not 
sensible,  but  to  be  revealed  in  its  own  time.  Thou  must  not 
judge,  then,  according  to  the  sense  of  sin,  which  terrifies  and 
disturbs  thee,  but  according  to  the  promise  of  faith  whereby 
Christ  is  promised  to  thee,  who  is  thy  perfect  and  eternal 
righteousness.”  “  Thou  sayest,  I  do  not  perceive  that  I  have 
righteousness ;  thou  must  not  perceive,  but  believe  that  thou 


L  uther. 


34 ' 


hast  righteousness/'  With  tremendous  energy  he  inculcates 
unceasingly  this  doctrine  ;  that,  as  far  as  any  moral  existence, 
i.e.  any  moral  evidences  of  existence  in  our  hearts  and  minds, 
are  concerned,  we  are  not  to  think  of  them,  with  reference  to 
this  righteousness ;  that  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  our  moral 
nature,  hut  that  it  does  exist  truly  and  absolutely  nevertheless, 
and  is  our  own.  This  is  the  great  truth  upon  which  we  are  to 
live.  The  believer  has  to  think  himself  to  he  perfectly  right¬ 
eous,  though  he  sees  himself  to  be  perfectly  wicked.  And  this 
explains  a  phraseology  to  which  we  come  in  Luther’s  writings, 
and  which  at  first  considerably  perplexes  us.  For  after  all 
this  picture  of  the  unmixed  evil  and  sin  with  which  our  con¬ 
science  is  ever  upbraiding  us,  Luther  is  often,  and  earnestly, 
impressing  upon  us  this  particular  distinction  with  respect  to 
sin  ;  that,  though  it  must  be  felt  somehow  and  by  some  part 
of  us,  the  conscience  must  not  feel  it.  Of  all  our  faculties,  the 
conscience  specially  is  restricted  from  feeling  sin.  blow  such 
a  phraseology  is  incomprehensible  at  first;  for  it  is  something 
like  telling  us  that  objects  must  be  seen,  but  that  of  all  the 
organs  and  senses  of  our  nature,  the  eye  must  not  see  them ;  or 
that  sounds  must  be  heard,  but  that  of  all  our  senses  and  per¬ 
ceptions,  the  ear  must  not  hear  them.  Conscience  is  that 
faculty  of  which  the  particular  function  is  to  distinguish  right 
and  wrong,  and  convict  us  of  sin  if  we  have  committed  sin  ; 
and  therefore  if  sin  is  felt  at  all,  conscience  must  be  the  part 
which  feels  it.  Upon  examination,  however,  we  see  that  this 
is  only  a  strong  form  of  speech  for  expressing  the  fact  that  the 
consciousness  of  internal  sin  must  be  absorbed  and  extin¬ 
guished  in  the  higher  conviction  of  external  righteousness. 
To  express  this,  the  conscience  is  described  as  itself  becoming 
changed  into  this  higher  conviction ;  its  nature  inverted,  it 
is  imperatively  required  to  be  conscious  of  that  of  which  it  is 
not  conscious,  and  not  conscious  of  that  of  which  it  is  conscious. 
Sin  must  not  reign  in  the  conscience,  but  be  content  with  tor¬ 
turing  the  body ;  that  is  to  say,  the  body  which  cannot  feel  it 
may  feel  it ;  the  conscience  which  can  must  not.  The  language 
is  equivalent  to  saying  that  sin  may  be  perceived  as  a  fact,  but 
not  as  sin.  It  is  the  peculiar  function  of  conscience  to  perceive 


342 


Luther. 


it  as  sin,  therefore  conscience  must  not  be  allowed  to  entertain 
the  perception  of  it  at  all ;  but  a  certain  lower  perception  in 
our  nature  can  see  it  as  a  fact,  without  being  in  the  least 
troubled  at  it ;  and  within  the  sphere  of  such  perceptions  it 
may  be  allowed  to  come.  With  the  memento  that  man’s  right¬ 
eousness,  as  being  sin,  and  the  law  as  producing  sin,  have  the 
same  unfitness  with  sin,  to  be  objects  of  conscience,  such  ap¬ 
pears  to  be  the  key  to  a  large  body  of  language  we  encounter 
in  Luther.  “  Conscience  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  law,  with 
works,  or  with  human  righteousness.”  “  The  law  must  remain 
extra  coelum,  i.e.  extra  cor  et  conscientiam”  “  Suffer  the  law  to 
reign  over  thy  body,  not  over  thy  conscience.”  “  The  law  hath 
dominion  over  the  flesh  ;  but  if  it  wishes  to  occupy  the  con¬ 
science,”  etc.  “The  flesh  should  be  subject  to  the  law,  remain 
in  its  sepulchre,  and  be  vexed  by  the  Egyptians ;  but  the 
conscience  must  be  free.”  “  In  the  state  let  the  severest 
obedience  to  the  law  be  exacted” — i.  e.  because  the  state  does 
not  recognise  sin  as  sin,  but  only  as  injurious  to  society,  there¬ 
fore  the  state  may  be  alive  to  sin — but  not  the  conscience. 
“  Let  the  conscience  sleep  joyfully  in  Christ,  without  the  least 
sense  of  the  law  of  sin  and  death.”  “  When  thy  conscience  is 
terrified  with  the  law,  and  struggles  with  the  judgment  of  God, 
then  consult  neither  the  law  nor  reason,  but  depend  on  grace 
alone,  and  the  word  of  consolation.  Then  conduct  thyself  alto¬ 
gether  as  though  thou  hadst  never  heard  of  the  law  of  God  ; 
ascend  into  the  darkness,  where  is  the  light  neither  of  law  nor 
reason,  but  the  enigma  of  faith  only,  which  certainly  decrees 
that  thou  art  saved  in  Christ,  beyond  and  outside  of  the  law. 
Beyond  and  above  the  light  of  law  and  reason  doth  the  Gospel 
take  us,  into  the  darkness  of  faith  where  the  law  and  reason 
have  no  business.”  “  Where  there  is  fear  and  the  sense  of  sin, 
death,  wrath,  and  judgment ;  there  there  is  nothing  celestial, 
nothing  divine.” — “  But  drown  thy  conscience  in  the  wounds, 
blood,  death,  and  resurrection  of  Christ.”  “Let  the  pious 
remember  that  in  conscience  they  are  free  before  God,  from 
the  curse  of  the  law,  though  they  are  slaves  to  the  law  in  the 
body.”  The  Old  Testament  is  allegorised  on  this  principle ; 
and  the  conscience  ascends  with  Isaac  to  the  mount,  the 


L  nt  her. 


343 


burden  of  the  law  remains  with  the  ass  below;  conscience 
ascends  with  Moses,  the  law  descends  with  him  to  be  dispensed 
to  the  people  below.  “  Moses  on  the  mount,  when  he  speaks 
face  to  face  with  God,  hath  not,  makes  not,  administers  not, 
the  law.  But,  having  come  down  from  the  mountain  he  is  a 
legislator,  and  governs  the  people  with  the  law.  In  like  man¬ 
ner  let  thy  conscience  be  free  from  the  law,  but  let  thy  body 
be  subject  to  the  law.”  “  Let  Moses  remain  on  the  earth, 
there  let  him  be  a  doctor  of  the  letter,  an  exacter  of  the  law,  a 
crucifier  of  sinners  ;  but  for  us,  we  have  a  new  guest  and  a 
new  house, — Christ  has  come  ;  and  Moses,  the  old  occupier, 
must  depart  and  migrate  elsewhere.”  The  meaning  is,  under 
every  form  and  turn  of  language,  and  there  is  not  much  variety 
even  in  that,  exactly  the  same.  Our  conscience  must  be  con¬ 
scious  alone  of  that  which  it  does  not  see  in  us — righteousness  ; 
totally  unconscious  of  that  which  it  alone  does  see  in  us — sin. 

Such  are  the  two  Lutheran  worlds,  or  natures,  of  utter  evil 
and  absolute  good ;  a  perceptible  and  actual  state  of  evil,  an 
unperceived  and  imputed  state  of  good  ;  whereof  the  latter 
must  wholly  annihilate  in  idea  and  feeling  the  former,  in  order 
for  the  individual  to  be  justified.  The  “  Law,”  and  “  Christ,” 
for  these  are  respectively  their  two  names,  are  antagonist 
principles  opposed  to  each  other  with  the  intensity  and  fierce¬ 
ness  of  the  two  principles  in  the  Eastern  Dualistic  philosophies 
— “  two  contraries  in  irreconcilable  war  with  each  other ;”  and 
the  triumph  is  when  the  former  is  destroyed.  The  “  Law”  is 
horror,  blackness,  quaking,  pallor,  sadness,  and  despair ;  a 
“  dungeon,”  a  “  hell,”  a  “  sepulchre,”  a  “  torturer,”  a  “  butcher 
“  whoever  saith  he  loves  it  lies  :  that  robber  who  loves  his 
own  dungeon  raves.”  To  this  legislatorial  principle  “  Christ  ”  is 
the  antagonistic.  “  Ghristus  gigas  potentissimus  sustulit  legem.” 
Christ  does  not  legislate,  but  kills  law.  He  says  to  the  “  Law,” 
Ego  ligabo  te,  I  will  bind  thee  :  Captivity,  I  will  lead  thee 
captive ;  Satan,  I  am  thy  Satan  ;  I  am  the  “  Butcher  of  the 
butcher,”  and  the  “  Devil  to  the  devil.” 

And  now  we  come  to  the  power  by  which  the  believer  was 
enabled  to  attain  this  victory,  and  wholly  supplant  this  sin  by 
this  righteousness ;  that  is  to  say,  to  the  medium  in  the  process 


344 


L  uther. 


of  individual  justification.  Though  all  moral  conditions  were 
rejected,  some  medium  or  other  it  was  necessary  to  have  by 
which  an  evil  nature  was  to  lay  hold  of,  and  appropriate  to 
itself,  a  perfect  righteousness  ;  as  it  could  not  be  supposed  that 
an  evil  being  would  become  absolutely  good  in  God’s  sight, 
without  anything  at  all  done  on  his  side.  The  medium  then 
mid  down  for  this  purpose  was  Faith.  But  it  was  faith  of  a 
particular  character,  which  in  connection  with  the  system  should 
be  noticed. 

Faith,  then,  before  it  was  allowed  to  occupy  its  position  in 
the  Lutheran  process  of  justification,  was  carefully  divested  of 
all  moral  characteristics.  There  is  a  faith,  which  is  in  its  very 
nature,  akin  to  love  or  moral :  but  it  was  not  this  kind  of  faith 
which  Luther  made  the  medium  between  man  and  God  in  the 
act  of  justification.  To  have  allowed  any  moral  element  in 
this  medium,  would  have  been  to  allow  human  goodness  a 
place  in  the  act  of  justification,  which  it  was  its  first  principle 
to  avoid  ;  and,  therefore,  he  jealously  and  accurately  guarded 
his  faith  from  such  admixture.  He  again  and  again  inculcates 
and  presses  the  distinction  that  the  faith  which  he  means  is  not 
that  faith  which  includes  love  ;  that  it  is  a  faculty  of  apprehen¬ 
sion  simply.  “  That  faith  which  apprehends  Christ,  not  that 
which  includes  love,  justifies.”  “  Faith  is  not  ineffectual  till 
joined  by  charity.”  He  speaks  of  it  as  an  insult  to  faith,  and 
“  making  it  an  empty  quality  in  the  soul,”  to  assert  that  it  de¬ 
pended  on  the  companionship  of  charity  for  its  effect  : — “  as  if,” 
be  says,  “  it  could  do  nothing  without  charity;  and  when  charity 
came,  then  was  effectual,  and  then  was  justifying.”  “  The 
apostle  attributes  the  operation  (in  justification)  to  faith  and 
not  to  love.”  “  Perish  the  sophists  with  their  accursed  gloss, 
F ides  format  a  char it  ate  that  “  impious  gloss,”  that  “  pestilent 
gloss.”  “  It  is  by  faith  sole,  not  by  faith  perfected  in  love,  that 
we  are  justified.”  “  Faith  may  be  concreted  in  works  after  we 
are  justified,  but  it  is  faith  abstract  by  which  we  are  justi¬ 
fied.”  The  faith,  then,  which  was  the  medium  of  justification 
in  Luther’s  system,  wras  an  extra-moral  faith.  It  was,  as  far  as 
we  can  apprehend  its  nature,  which  it  is  not  easy  to  do,  the  pure 
abstract  faculty  of  confidence,  whereby  the  mind  assures  itself 


Luther. 


345 


of  something  of  which  it  wants  to  be  assured.  As  such,  it  is 
not  untypical  of  Luther’s  temper ;  and  the  reader  who  follows 
him  through  his  career,  or  listens  to  his  table-talk,  or  watches 
those  symptoms  of  personal  character  which  appear,  as  they  often 
do,  in  his  theological  works,  will  catch  many  a  trait  and  senti¬ 
ment,  which  may  carry  him  back  to  his  original  dogma. 

The  great  cardinal  virtue  in  Luther’s  eyes  was  confidence. 
He  had  a  special  admiration,  an  enthusiastic  affection  for  that 
particular  faculty  of  mind,  which  makes  a  man  inwardly  strong 
and  self-supporting.  In  the  description  of  Adam  before  the 
Tall,  in  his  Commentary  on  Genesis,  he  gives  us  his  beau-ideal 
of  a  man,  and  strength  and  self-confidence  enter  remarkably 
into  it.  Adam  shows  something  of  the  Herculean  model.  Thus 
Luther  dwells  with  animation  upon  his  dominion  over  the 
beasts.  He  describes  a  character,  bearing  no  slight  resemblance 
to  what  in  modern  lanmia<?e  we  call  a  master-mind ;  one 
endowed  with  a  mysterious  power,  marvellous  self-respect,  and 
instinctive  command  over  others’  wills  and  movements.  Man 
in  his  primitive  state  is  the  dominus  terrce,  lord  of  the  earth,  not 
by  labour,  art,  and  cruelty,  but  by  an  innate  powrnr  and  will,  to 
which  the  whole  creation  unconsciously  bows ;  and  he  has  this 
power,  because  he  is  true  to  himself,  and  feels  no  distrust 
within.  But  with  the  fall  this  inward  confidence  goes,  and  all 
is  altered  :  he  shakes  like  a  leaf,  is  full  of  terror  and  alarm,  and 
starts  even  at  the  sound  of  God’s  approach.  Then  the  beasts 
shake  off  their  yoke,  the  earth  becomes  stubborn  and  disorderly, 
and  cunning,  toil,  and  misery  succeed  to  artless  and  majestic 
power.  The  Lutheran  Adam  is  a  superior  creation  to  the 
Calvinistic  Adam  of  Milton  :  but  it  is  impossible  not  to  see  in 
the  character  the  ruling  taste  in  Luther’s  mind  for  the  simple 
faculty  of  confidence  as  the  source  of  strength  and  happiness. 
On  the  contrary,  distrust  as  to  our  condition,  and  where  we 
stand,  and  how  God  regards  us — the  least  apprehension,  fear,  and 
doubt,  are  simple  misery  and  meanness  with  him.  “  What  is 
more  miserable  than  uncertainty  ?  ”  he  asks  again  and  again,  as 
if  Nature  herself  revolted  from  it : — that  monster  of  “  uncer¬ 
tainty,”  that  “pest  of  uncertainty,”  “  which  makes  whatsoever 
thou  thinkest,  speakest,  doest,  sin.”  How  could  a  man  be  easy 


346 


Luther . 


with  such  a  disease  upon  him  ?  How  could  he  worship,  how 
could  he  serve  God  the  least  ?  And  all  those  texts  of  Scrip¬ 
ture,  which  describe  the  confidence  of  the  good  and  the  fear  of 
the  wicked, — “  The  wicked  flee  when  no  man  pursueth  “  the 
wicked  are  like  a  troubled  sea “  there  is  no  peace  for  the 
wicked “  the  righteous  are  bold  as  a  lion  “  he  that  doeth 
evil  hateth  the  light “  whatsoever  is  not  of  faith  is  sin “  the 
just  shall  live  by  faith,” — were  interpreted  in  this  particular 
sense. 

The  faith  which  was  the  medium  in  Luther’s  process  of 
justification  was  thus  a  pure  and  abstract  faculty  of  confidence 
which  was  efficacious  in  and  out  of  itself.  Believe  that  yon 
are  absolved,  and  you  are  absolved — was  his  teaching  as  a 
priest  before  he  broke  from  the  Church ;  never  mind  whether 
you  deserve  absolution  or  no.  He  that  believes  is  better  than 
he  that  deserves.  Always  be  sure  that  yon  are  pleasing  to 
God  ;  if  you  are  sure  yon  are,  you  are.  Feel  yourself  safe  ;  if 
you  feel  safe,  you  are  safe.  On  the  contrary,  if  you  doubt 
about  it,  you  are  condemned,  because  you  are  self-condemned. 
You  are  not  in  the  image  of  God  then,  but  in  the  image  of  the 
devil.  Becollect  yourself ;  make  an  effort ;  believe  ;  be  “  cer¬ 
tainly  resolved  that  you  are  in  favour  with  God.”  You  are 
then  a  son  of  God  and  a  saint,  strong,  perfect,  and  triumphant ; 
you  go  forth  like  the  sun  in  the  heaven,  and  rejoice  like  a  giant 
refreshed  with  wine.  You  have  conquered  the  world,  the  flesh, 
and  the  devil,  and  have  trodden  hell  and  darkness  under  foot. 

But  this  confidence,  whatever  apparent  strength  it  might 
attain  to,  wanted,  from  the  very  hypothesis  on  which  Luther’s 
system  was  built,  that  reality  and  basis  which  Catholic  faith 
has.  All  faith  is,  indeed,  a  sort  of  confidence ;  but  the  confi¬ 
dence  of  Catholic  faith  has  this  remarkable  characteristic,  that 
it  appeals  to  positive  fact  for  its  basis.  Human  nature  is  not, 
according  to  Catholic  theology,  though  brought  by  an  incom¬ 
prehensible  mystery  under  a  condition  or  state  of  evil,  in  a 
totally  evil  state.  It  still  bears  the  stamp  of  its  Divine 
original,  has  moral  tastes  and  preferences,  and  a  real  power  of 
performing  acts  of  various  degrees  of  moral  goodness  ;  has 
memorials  of  past  and  pledges  of  future  perfection.  Catholic 


Luther. 


34  7 


faith,  then,  with  respect  to  the  unseen  world,  rests  upon  the 
actual  facts  of  the  seen.  Proceeding  upon  data,  it  is  a  faith 
allied  to  reason,  and  not  a  blind  faith.  Man  has  some  good  in 
him,  therefore  he  may  one  day  be  better,  and  an  ultimate  state 
of  acceptableness  in  God’s  sight  is  made  credible  to  him  by  the 
fact  that  he  can  make  some  approaches  to  such  acceptableness 
now.  It  is  for  the  same  cause  a  faith  allied  to  hope.  For  it 
is  the  peculiar  characteristic  of  the  faculty  of  hope  to  enlarge 
and  advance  upon  fact  as  distinct  from  doing  without  fact  alto¬ 
gether  ;  existing  fact  given,  hope  can  proceed  upon  it  inde¬ 
finitely  ;  but  some  ground  of  fact  it  must  have.  The  phrase 
of  “  hoping  against  hope”  does  not  suppose  the  total  absence  of 
all  such  ground,  but  only  the  reduction  of  it  to  the  smallest 
imaginable  quantum.  Sailors  wrecked  in  the  middle  of  the 
sea  hope  for  the  sight  of  a  sail,  in  proportion  as  they  know 
their  situation  to  be  in  some  general  line  of  navigation,  know 
the  traffic  on  that  line  to  be  considerable,  know  the  time  of  the 
year  to  be  the  customary  one  for  that  traffic,  and  other  like 
data  ;  if  they  have  no  data  at  all  for  hope,  they  cannot 
legitimately  hope.  So  far  as  faith  and  hope  can  be  viewed 
as  distinguished  from  each  other,  faith  takes  the  negative,  and 
hope  the  positive  side  ;  faith  exerts  her  particular  powers  in 
opposing  those  appearances  which  are  hostile  ;  hope  hers  in 
enlarging  those  appearances  which  are  friendly.  Catholic 
faith,  then,  as  it  has  existing  fact  to  proceed  upon,  is  a  faith 
allied  to  hope  ;  nay,  so  intimately  allied,  that  hope  practically 
precedes  faith  in  the  act  of  belief ;  and  we  believe  because  we 
hope,  rather  than  hope  because  we  believe  ;  we  see  an  actual 
ground,  however  small ;  hope  expands  this,  and  not  till  then 
we  have  faith. 

Allied  thus  to  hope  and  reason,  Catholic  faith  is  emphati¬ 
cally  a  natural  kind  of  faith.  It  is  not  violent  or  forced  ;  it 
has  only  to  believe  in  the  future  expansion  and  perfection  of 
that  which  it  now  sees.  The  Christian  sees  tendencies,  and 
he  has  to  believe  in  issues  ;  he  sees  approaches,  and  he  has  to 
believe  in  fulfilments  ;  he  sees  a  foundation,  and  he  infers  a 
superstructure  ;  he  rises  by  a  reasonable  ascent  from  earth  to 
heaven ;  the  visible  world  contains  the  elements  of  the  in- 


Luther. 


348 

visible  ;  the  kingdom  of  nature  opens  by  a  gradual  process 
into  that  of  grace.  The  very  smallest  act  of  our  moral  nature 
connects  him  by  anticipation  with  the  “  glory  which  shall  be 
revealed  in  him.”  Though  he  cannot  say,  “  It  is  finished,”  he 
can  say,  “  It  is  begun  ;  ”  and  in  that  visible  beginning  has  a 
solid  substratum  for  the  most  inspiring  belief.  Thus,  when  the 
great  philosopher  of  our  own  Church  undertook  the  task  of 
convincing  an  infidel  age  of  the  truth  of  religion,  the  line  he 
adopted  was  that  of  calling  its  attention  to  present  visible 
facts.  He  told  men  that  they  were  moral  beings,  born  with 
the  love  of  virtue  and  hatred  of  vice,  endowed  with  generous 
affections,  and  with  the  power  of  doing  virtuous  actions — a 
power  which  could  be  indefinitely  increased  by  habit  and  self- 
discipline  ;  and  he  proved,  next,  that  this  goodness  was  more 
or  less  rewarded.  There  were  then  tendencies,  he  said,  which 
pointed  of  themselves  to  some  ultimate  completion.  That 
which  religion  taught  us  did  exist  to  a  certain  extent  now  ; 
and,  therefore,  might  exist  to  a  much  greater  extent  hereafter. 
That  is  to  say,  his  was  a  philosophy  of  hope  ;  it  saw  in  the 
midst  of  the  wildness  and  disorder  of  this  present  scene  some 
facts  which  bore  in  one  direction,  and  hope  took  up  those  facts 
and  enlarged  them  into  a  system. 

But  Luther  had  no  present  facts  to  appeal  to  according  to 
his  system.  He  had  no  tendencies  and  no  approaches.  And, 
therefore,  though  he  recognised  an  unseen  world  of  absolute 
good,  and — in  distinction  from  making  evil  of  the  essence 
of  humanity,  or  irrevocably  fixing  and  perpetuating  it  in  us — 
pointed  to  a  time  when  we  should  be  perfectly  righteous,  and 
could  say  J ustitia  tibi  parata  est  in  cwlo,  “  in  a  future  life 
thou  shalt  be  cleansed  from  all  sin,  cleared  of  all  concupiscence, 
be  pure  as  the  sun,  and  have  perfect  love  ;”  this  unseen  world 
was  deprived  of  all  medium  to  connect  it  with  the  seen  one, 
and,  therefore,  deprived  of  that  evidence  which  constitutes  the 
legitimate  claim  to  our  faith.  Of  two  worlds,  of  absolute  evil 
and  absolute  good  diametrically  opposed,  he  placed  us  in  the 
one,  and  told  us  to  believe  in  the  other.  But  the  natural  ques¬ 
tion  immediately  arises,  Why  should  we  ?  Ho  system  of 
evidences,  either  in  the  religious  or  in  any  other  department, 


L  nt  her. 


349 


can  dispense  with  that  primary  law  of  all  argument — how  can 
we  reason  but  from  what  we  know  ?  Let  any  basis  of  fact, 
however  small,  be  allowed  us,  and  we  can  build  indefinitely 
upon  it ;  but  if  we  have  no  fact  at  all,  we  have  nothing  to  build 
upon.  The  faith  of  Lutheran  theology  was  thus  excluded,  by 
the  very  fundamental  principles  of  that  theology,  from  the 
reasonable  and  natural  type.  The  act  of  faith  became  rather 
one  of  mental  power,  by  which  a  person,  from  pure  force  of 
will,  made  himself  believe  in  what  there  was  no  ground  to 
believe,  than  one  of  natural  conviction.  It  was  faith  deprived 
of  its  membership  with  the  other  portions  of  our  spiritual 
nature  ;  faith  without  hope,  as  it  was  faith  without  love. 
Excluded  from  a  reasonable  and  natural  character,  it  was 
compelled  to  assume  a  fanatical  one ;  faith  became  assurance. 
The  task  of  the  Christian  was  to  work  himself  up  by  strong 
effort  to  the  belief  that  he  himself  was  personally  saved,  was  a 
child  of  God,  was  in  a  state  of  justification.  If  the  believer 
asked  why,  or  how,  he  was  to  believe,  he  was  told  again, 
Believe  ;  make  yourself  believe ;  believe  somehow  or  other. 
He  was  urged  with  arguments  enough,  addressed  to  his  mere 
will  and  sense  of  personal  advantage ;  was  threatened  and 
promised ;  was  told  he  would  be  intolerably  wretched  if  he 
did  not  believe  so,  unutterably  happy  if  he  did  ;  but  ground 
of  reason  there  was  none.  Assurance  thus  left  to  assure  itself 
as  it  could,  became  an  anxious,  struggling,  and  fluctuating  gift. 
It  rose  and  it  fell  with  the  state  of  the  spirits,  and  even  state 
of  the  body.  It  was  at  any  moment  liable  to  be  upset,  and 
when  upset  the  will  had  to  make  another  effort  to  regain  it. 
These  struggles,  or  “  agonies,5’  occupy  a  prominent  place  in  the 
practical  or  devotional  department  of  Luther’s  theological 
system.  They  are  appealed  to  as  the  tests  of  the  genuineness 
and  reality  of  the  Christian’s  belief.  Has  he  been  tempted  to 
doubt  and  despair  of  his  salvation,  and  has  he  had  to  make  the 
most  tremendous  internal  efforts  to  recover  his  certainty  of  it? 
these  are  the  tokens  which  a  loving  but  chastising  Father  sent 
him  of  good-will  and  favour.  They  were  the  trials  to  prove 
him,  and  stimulants  to  raise  him  to  a  higher  degree  of  assur¬ 
ance  than  ever.  The  same  reason  which  gave  Luther’s  faith  a 


350 


Luther. 


fanatical,  gave  it  a  personal  and  individual  character  too. 
Genuine  faith,  as  it  rests  on  a  large  external  ground,  is  wide 
and  social  in  its  object,  looks  forward  to  the  final  issue  of  this 
whole  system  of  things,  the  ultimate  triumph  of  virtue  over 
vice,  to  the  great  Day  of  Judgment  and  the  restitution  of  all 
things.  But  Luther’s  faith,  as  it  narrowed  its  basis,  narrowed 
its  object  too.  Withdrawing  from  the  wide  ground  of  reason 
and  nature,  the  unsupported  faith  of  mere  will — choosing  to 
believe  because  it  wished  to  do  so — as  it  derived  all  its 
strength  from  the  individual,  interested  itself  about  the  indi¬ 
vidual  only  ;  and  faith  became,  in  its  whole  scope  and  direc¬ 
tion,  personal. 

Such  is  that  whole  system  which,  amongst  ourselves,  goes 
under  the  name  of  Calvinism.  It  is,  of  course,  wrong,  histori¬ 
cally  speaking,  to  call  Luther  a  Calvinist,  because  Luther 
preceded  Calvin,  and  was  the  original  discoverer  of  that  set  of 
ideas  which  Calvin  only  compacted  and  systematised.  But, 
amongst  ourselves,  in  consequence  of  our  acquaintance  having- 
lain  more  with  the  Genevan  than  the  German  branch  of  the 
Deformation,  these  ideas  are  associated  with  the  name  of 
Calvin,  and,  therefore,  amongst  us,  Luther’s  theology  may  be 
designated  as  Calvinism.  No  greater  contrast,  indeed,  than 
that  between  the  personal  characters  of  the  German  and  the 
Genevan  Reformer  can  be  well  imagined,  and  the  types  of 
character  they  have  handed  down  to  their  respective  schools 
are  widely  distinct,  but  their  theology  is  essentially  the  same. 

To  return  to  the  point  at  which  we  diverged.  Luther  had 
now  found  the  solution  of  his  difficulty,  and  was  satisfied.  He 
had  encountered  a  tormenting  puzzle,  and  had  now  the  answer. 
How  could  man  fulfil  the  law,  was  the  puzzle.  By  simple  im¬ 
putation,  was  the  answer.  The  whole  difficulties  attending  the 
adherence  of  evil  to  our  nature  were  now  explained  to  Luther. 
The  mystery  of  Conscience  was  solved.  He  had  got  his  evprjKa. 
He  dwelt  upon  it,  now  that  he  had  got  it,  with  deep  and  un¬ 
tiring  relish ;  he  handled  it  and  embraced  it  with  perpetual 
mental  fondness.  He  felt  like  a  person  possessed  of  a  great 
secret,  for  which  the  whole  world  had  been  struggling  from  its 
creation,  and  never  yet  attained.  He  felt  as  Newton  might 


L  nt  her. 


35i 


feel  when  he  had  discovered  the  principle  of  gravitation,  or  as 
Harvey  might  feel  when  he  had  discovered  the  circulation  of 
the  blood,  or  as  one  of  the  elder  sages  might  have  felt  had  he 
discovered  the  elixir  vitce ,  or  the  principle  of  alchemical  trans¬ 
mutation.  He  felt  as  one  of  those  great  philosophers  of  the 
ancient  world  might  have  felt  when  he  discovered  some  great 
moral  principle  which  explained  the  phenomena  of  human  life, 
and  disclosed  the  secret  of  human  happiness,  like  Pythagoras 
when  he  discovered  Humber,  or  Zeno  when  he  discovered  Fate, 
or  Epicurus  when  he  discovered  Chance.  Every  one  who  has 
found  out  a  riddle,  or  put  a  Chinese  puzzle  together,  or  solved 
a  problem  in  geometry,  knows  the  peculiar  satisfaction  which 
attends  the  climax  of  solution — a  satisfaction  which  is  of  course 
deeper  in  proportion  to  the  depth  and  interest  of  the  difficulty. 
Luther  looked  back  with  the  feeling  of  a  traveller  at  rest  upon 
his  past  struggles  and  searchings.  “  Can  you  tell  me  how  to 
fulfil  the  law?”  was  the  question  he  asked  now,  as  if  the  diffi¬ 
culty  itself  were  pleasing,  because  he  felt  in  possession  of  the 
key  to  it.  What  is  that  impossible  thing  called  righteous¬ 
ness  which  has  tortured  the  human  mind  from  the  foundation 
of  the  world  ?  Square  that  circle  if  you  can.  Find  that  7 rov 
(ttco.  He  saw  the  whole  world  wandering  in  a  maze  on  this 
subject, 

“Errare  atque  viam  palantes  quserere  vitse,” 

going  round  and  round,  and  pursuing  their  own  footsteps  ; 
arguing  in  a  circle,  and  endeavouring  to  escape  from  sin  by 
“  working  righteousness,”  which  when  worked  only  made  them 
feel  greater  sinners  than  before.  He  saw  a  fatal  error,  affect¬ 
ing  the  very  foundation  of  the  Christian  system,  in  undisturbed 
hereditary  possession  of  the  whole  Christian  world,  and  he  saw 
in  himself  the  person  destined  to  subvert  it. 

There  has  been  no  Indulgence  fair  at  Wittenberg  then  as 
yet,  and  no  Tetzel,  and  yet  Luther  has  started.  As  distin¬ 
guished  from  being  a  mere  practical  Reformer  in  the  first  in¬ 
stance,  led  on  incidentally  to  doctrine,  he  was  primarily,  as  we 
said  at  the  beginning  of  this  article,  a  doctrinal  Reformer,  the 
founder  of  a  new  school,  the  propagator  of  an  idea.  He  was 
one  of  that  corps  of  creative  minds  who,  whether  as  philo- 


35  2 


L  nther . 


sophers  or  as  religionists,  Pagan  or  Christian,  have  succeeded 
in  permanently  impressing  their  conceptions  on  large  portions 
of  society,  and  leaving  intellectual  fraternities  behind  them. 
He  began  with  a  course  of  dreaming  and  speculation.  He 
brooded  with  keenness  and  passion  upon  the  great  mystery  of 
our  moral  nature.  One  particular  idea,  the  boldness  of  which 
suited  the  impatience  of  his  mind,  seemed  to  solve  it,  and  he 
devoted  himself  to  the  promulgation  of  that  idea.  A  period  of 
four  years,  commencing  with  his  first  entrance  into  the  Augus¬ 
tine  monastery  at  Erfurt  in  1505,  carried  on  and  completed  this 
search  and  discovery  of  Luther.  In  1509,  on  the  recommenda¬ 
tion  of  Staupitz,  the  Vicar-General  of  the  Dominican  order, 
upon  whom  Luther’s  trials  and  struggles,  and  the  intellectual 
and  religious  energy  they  exhibited,  had  made  a  great  impres¬ 
sion,  Luther  received  from  the  Elector  of  Saxony  the  ap¬ 
pointment  of  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  the  University  of 
Wittenberg,  accompanied  with  a  most  urgent  and  compli¬ 
mentary  letter  from  that  Prince.  In  a  short  time  he  received 
from  the  Senate  of  Wittenberg  the  appointment  of  City 
Preacher.  He  regarded  the  appointment  as  an  important  open¬ 
ing  for  the  promulgation  of  his  great  dogma,  and  was  besieged 
with  nervous  alarm  that  he  should  not  be  able  to  turn  it  to  the 
account  he  ought  to  do ;  but  his  success  equalled  his  fondest 
hopes.  Lie  preached  by  turns  in  the  Monastery,  in  the  Eoyal 
Chapel,  and  in  the  Collegiate  Church.  “  His  voice  was  fine, 
sonorous,  clear,  striking,  his  gesticulation  emphatic  and  digni¬ 
fied.”  He  departed  wholly  from  the  established  type  of  ser¬ 
mon,  quoting,  instead  of  the  schoolmen,  the  Bible,  especially 
St.  Paul’s  Epistles.  The  degree  of  Bachelor  in  Theology 
enabled  him  to  add  to  these  sermons  University  lectures  on 
the  sacred  text,  and  “  never  in  any  Saxon  professorial  chair 
was  heard  such  luminous  explanation.”  He  delighted  in  these 
lectures,  and  passed  whole  nights  in  preparing  for  them. 
“  Eminent  doctors  came  to  listen,  and  retired  full  of  admira¬ 
tion.  The  venerable  Pollich,  known  by  the  sobriquet  of  Lux 
Mundi,  heard  him,  and,  struck  with  wonder,  exclaimed,  ‘  This 
father  hath  profound  insight,  exceeding  imagination ;  he  will 
trouble  the  doctors  before  he  has  done.’”  In  addition  to  his 


Ltd  her. 


-t  r  -> 
OJJ 


academical  posts  he  was,  by  the  appointment  of  his  patron 
Staupitz,  made  visitor  of  the  monasteries  in  that  province.  In 
a  letter  to  a  friend  he  writes  :  “  I  had  need  of  two  secretaries  to 
keep  up  my  correspondence ;  pity  my  unhappy  fortune.  I  am 
conventual  concionator,  table-preacher,  director  of  studies ;  I 
am  vicar,  or,  in  few  words,  eleven  priors  in  one ;  conservator  of 
the  ponds  of  Litzkau,  pleader  and  assessor  at  Torgau,  Paulinic 
reader,  and  collector  of  psalms ;  add  to  all  these  the  assaults  of 
the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil.”  His  reputation  extended, 
and  he  preached  in  the  castle  at  Dresden  before  Duke  George. 
In  1516  he  commenced  the  publication  of  a  series  of  theses, 
which,  under  the  cover  of  the  disputative  system  of  the  day, 
attacked  the  established  doctrines  on  the  point  of  justification, 
and  put  forth  those  views  of  the  exclusive  necessity  of  faith, 
the  inefficacy  of  works,  and  the  slavery  of  the  will,  which  it 
was  the  aim  of  all  his  future  theological  labours  to  establish. 
Pive  papers,  cpcovavra  avveroicnv,  containing  respectively  twelve, 
ninety-five,  fifty,  forty,  and  a  hundred  propositions,  alarmed 
the  old  and  awakened  the  new  intellect  in  the  Church. 

But  the  time  now  approached  when  Luther  was  to  add  the 
department  of  practical  to  that  of  doctrinal  Reformer,  and, 
taking  his  dogma  along  with  him,  to  prepare  the  ground  for  its 
reception  by  an  attack  on  a  whole  existing  practical  system. 
It  is  obvious  that  the  teacher  of  a  new  doctrine  cannot  do  his 
work  extensively  and  zealously  without  becoming  a  practical 
man  to  do  so.  He  is  bound  to  attack  what  stands  in  his  way 
and  occupies  the  ground,  and  he  thus  necessarily  finds  himself 
at  war  with  a  whole  mass  of  existing  interests  and  machinery ; 
the  doctrinal  line  necessarily  leads  into  the  practical.  Such  a 
practical  line  was,  moreover,  not  at  all  uncongenial  to  Luther’s 
character, — even  that  internal  and  speculative  part  of  it,  which 
is  the  only  one  we  have  as  yet  had  before  us.  We  have  seen 
him  a  sort  of  dreamer  indeed,  and  a  visionary,  intent  upon 
the  difficulties  of  the  spiritual  and  metaphysical  world,  and 
struggling  with  the  great  mystery  of  evil;  but  it  is  this 
visionary  and  internal  line  of  thought  which  often  produces 
the  most  portentous  energy  in  action.  Thus  the  general  alli¬ 
ance  which  has  been  observed  between  infidelity  and  radi- 
M.E.-I.]  z 


354 


L  uther. 


calism,  though  the  one  is  theoretic,  the  other  practical.  The 
French  Eevolution  itself,  with  all  its  tremendous  exhibition  of 
practical  power,  issued  out  of  a  philosophy  which  seemed  con¬ 
cerned  only  with  the  abstract  universe,  and  to  be  discontented 
with  the  constitution  of  things.  As  we  examine  deeper,  we 
discern  the  most  intense  passion  involved  in  such  speculation. 
The  sensitive  and  keen  temper  moves  in  the  department  of 
philosophy  as  if  it  were  a  dramatic  sphere,  perceives  apparent 
defect  and  injustice  in  the  system  of  the  world,  is  angry  as  if 
it  had  received  a  visible  wrong  and  affront,  and  rushes  into 
atheism  out  of  revenge.  And  the  same  temper  is  for  the  same 
reason  furious  with  respect  to  the  abuses  and  grievances  of  the 
social  and  practical  world.  Luther’s  reveries  upon  the  work¬ 
ings  of  the  moral  law  and  the  obstinacy  of  the  evil  principle  in 
nature,  how  it  pursued  us  and  found  us  out  even  in  our  best 
acts,  fastened  on  us  and  refused  to  be  shaken  off,  accused,  con¬ 
demned,  and  humiliated  us ;  that  passionate  and  querimonious 
temper,  which  felt  the  temptation  to  rebel  against  the  system 
of  things  on  account  of  evil  in  the  abstract,  indicated  just  a 
mind  most  ready  to  break  out,  when  the  opportunity  arrived, 
against  the  evils  of  the  practical  and  concrete  world  ;  the  abuses 
and  grievances,  the  frauds  and  cheats,  the  pride  of  the  great, 
and  the  insolence  of  the  strong,  which  the  established  system 
of  the  day  displayed. 

If  there  ever  was  an  age  in  which  the  external  and  work- 
ing  system  of  the  Church  was  calculated  to  provoke  and  excite 
such  a  mind  to  action,  it  was  the  age  in  which  Luther  lived. 
It  exhibited  that  peculiar  mixture,  so  poignantly  irritating  to 
a  keen  temper,  of  the  grossest  abuses  with  the  most  placid  and 
easy  self-complacency  in  those  who  maintained  and  were 
responsible  for  them.  The  Court  of  Eorne  allowed  the  lowest 
fraud  and  imposture  in  the  working  system  of  the  Church,  and 
suffered  faith  and  reason  to  be  shocked,  itself  all  the  while 
reposing  in  a  superciliously  intellectual,  and  even  rationalis¬ 
ing  philosophy.  There  is  something  in  honest  belief  in  a 
system,  however  erroneous  itself,  which  tends  to  soften  and 
disarm  a  complainer ;  but  it  was  rather  too  much  for  the 
Court  of  Eome  to  expect  of  a  class  of  sensitive  intellects, 


Luther. 


355 


which  were  then  rising  np  in  the  Church,  that  they  were 
calmly  to  embrace  all  the  lies  of  her  practical  system,  while 
she  herself  did  not  believe  them,  and  was  laughing  in  her 
sleeve.  There  was  impatience  and  self-will,  doubtless,  in  the 
spirit  in  which  the  Continental  Beformers  raised  and  carried 
on  their  opposition  ;  hut  Borne  herself  had  certainly  no  right  to 
complain  of  it.  If  they  were  guilty,  she  was  not  innocent ;  nor 
has  she  any  right,  on  the  field  of  controversy,  to  assume  that 
position  which  she  does,  of  having  been  sinned  against  without 
having  sinned.  The  human  mind  was  entering,  then,  on  a 
new  and  mysterious  stage  of  its  history ;  and  that  great  intel¬ 
lectual  movement  which  has  been  steadily  advancing  ever 
since,  and  trying  the  world’s  faith  in  its  progress,  had  begun. 
Borne  herself  partook  largely  of  that  revival.  Did  she  bear 
the  test  well,  and  set  the  example  so  much  wanted  at  the 
commencement  of  such  a  movement,  of  intellect  not  really 
opposing  faith  ?  or,  dazzled  herself,  and  carried  away  by  the 
revival,  did  she  set  the  whole  world  the  very  contrary  example 
of  intellect  undermining  faith  ?  Did  she,  when  she  headed 
that  intellectual  movement,  teach  the  world  how  to  bear  it  ? 
We  have  the  answer  to  the  question  in  the  accounts  trans¬ 
mitted  to  us  of  a  Papal  Court  which  seemed,  by  some  inebria¬ 
tion  of  the  intellect,  to  have  dreamed  itself  out  of  Christianity 
into  paganism,  ignored,  by  a  sort  of  common  consent,  the 
Gospel  revelation,  and  instituted  again  the  Groves  of  Acade- 
mus.  An  elegant  heathen  Pope  who  carried  on  Tusculan 
disputations ;  Cardinals  who  adorned  their  walls  with  scenes 
from  Ovid’s  Metamorphoses,  and  devoted  themselves  to  Cice¬ 
ronian  Latin ;  and  a  whole  scene  of  luxurious  intellectuality 
in  Borne,  contrasted  bitterly  with  the  palpable  superstitions 
and  abuses  of  the  out-of-doors  world ;  and  the  centre  of 
Christendom,  putting  itself  quietly  and  unconcernedly  ab  extra 
to  a  whole  system  for  which  it  was  responsible,  while  it  taught 
men  to  despise  that  system,  provoked  at  the  same  time  dis¬ 
gust  and  rebellion  against  its  own  hypocrisy.  Nor  did  the  in¬ 
tellectual  movement  of  the  a^e  show  better  fruits  in  the 
morals  than  in  the  faith  of  the  Boman  Court.  The  morals 
of  the  Boman  ecclesiastics  were  scandalous,  and  it  was  only 


35^ 


Luther . 


a  question  whether  their  vices  themselves,  or  the  shame¬ 
lessness  with  which  they  indulged  them,  was  the  worse 
feature. 

We  shall  not  dwell  upon  a  scene  with  which  our  readers 
are  already  sufficiently  familiar,  that  of  the  sale  of  indulgences 
in  Germany  in  the  year  1517,  conducted  by  the  Dominican 
monk  Tetzel.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  it  signally  exhibited 
the  impostures  and  abuses  of  that  system.  Coarse,  bold,  and 
brazen, — there  is  strong  reason  for  adding  immoral, — Tetzel 
carried  out  the  system  with  a  swing ;  and,  intent  solely  on 
performing  his  office  with  practical  efficiency,  hawked  his 
commodity,  in  the  perfect  unconsciousness  of  vulgar  zeal,  in 
churches,  public  streets,  taverns,  and  ale-houses,  like  a  spirited 
man  of  business.  At  a  cross  set  up  in  the  market-place,  from 
which  the  Pope’s  arms  were  suspended,  the  auctioneer  extolled 
the  merits  of  his  article,  and  announced  that  as  soon  as  ever 
“  the  money  chinked  ”  in  Tetzel’ s  box,  sin  to  that  amount  was 
forgiven, — the  crowd  standing  about  with  a  mixture  of  fun  and 
business,  as  it  does  in  a  fair.  In  the  course  of  his  rounds  he 
came  to  Jiiterbogk,  four  miles  from  Wittenberg.  Luther’s 
indignation  rose  as  he  surveyed  the  scene.  He  waited  till  the 
approach  of  All-Saints  Day  brought  a  crowTd  of  pilgrims  to 
Wittenberg,  and  on  the  eve  of  that  day  fastened  on  the  church- 
doors  ninety-five  theses  against  indulgences, — copies  of  which, 
accompanied  with  letters  of  remonstrance,  he  sent  to  Albert, 
Archbishop  of  Magdeburg,  and  Jerome,  Bishop  of  Branden¬ 
burg,  within  whose  jurisdiction  the  traffic  was  going  on,  and 
to  the  former  of  whom  half  the  proceeds  of  it  were  farmed. 

Luther  now  stood  before  the  world  as  a  Beformer ;  and  as 
such  the  authorities  of  the  Boman  Church  met  him  with  one 
aim  and  policy.  Some  were  for  mild  suppression  ;  others  for 
fierce  suppression;  but  all  were  for  simple  suppression.  It 
was  a  disturbance,  and  it  must  be  put  down.  Tetzel  himself 
erected  a  scaffold  in  one  of  the  promenades  of  Frankfort ; 
walked  in  procession  to  it  with  his  insignia  as  Inquisitor  of 
the  faith ;  preached  a  sermon ;  ordered  the  heretic  to  be 
brought  forward  for  punishment ;  placed  the  theses  on  the 
scaffold,  and  burnt  them.  The  view  of  Prierias,  the  Pope’s 


Luther. 


357 


Censor,  who  answered  Luther  from  Eome,  was,  “  Dogs  must 
be  barking.  0  dear  Luther,  wert  thou  to  receive  from  our 
lord  the  Pope  a  good  bishopric  thou  wouldst  sing  smaller,  and 
even  preach  up  the  indulgence  which  it  is  now  thy  pleasure 
to  vilify.”  “  It  is  high  treason,”  exclaimed  Hochstraten,  the 
Inquisitor  of  Cologne,  “  against  the  Church  to  leave  such  a 
heretic  alive  another  hour.  Erect  instantly  the  scaffold  for 
him  !  ”  The  general  view  of  those  in  power,  less  passionately 
expressed,  was  essentially  the  same.  Scultet,  Bishop  of 
Brandenburg,  a  man  of  mildness  and  finesse,  in  a  civil  answer 
to  Luther’s  letter,  commended  his  zeal,  and  admitted  that  there 
was  occasion  for  it,  but  told  him  to  be  quiet.  Leo  himself, 
ever  easy  and  good-tempered,  after  once  persuading  himself  to 
take  a  serious  view  of  the  subject,  and  descending  from  his 
lofty  contempt  for  both  sides  in  the  contest,  saw  no  other  line 
but  the  established  and  traditionary  one  of  mere  suppression. 
Such  was  the  policy ;  and  the  policy  suggested  its  own  means. 
Luther  must  be  possessed  in  person ;  the  man  must  be  got 
hold  of.  The  Court  addressed  itself  with  a  mechanical  instinct 
to  that  one  point.  Form,  gravity,  decorum,  kindness,  were 
observed  in  the  means  ;  but  Italian  sagacity  was  clear  as  to 
the  end,  and  knew  that  the  best  way  to  treat  with  a  foe  was  to 
secure  him  first.  Luther  once  in  Borne,  away  from  friends, 
and  removed  from  sympathy  and  aid,  ecclesiastical  justice 
would  have  a  comparatively  easy  task ;  and  one  of  two  alter¬ 
natives  must  follow,  either  that  he  should  not  leave  it  at  all, 
or  leave  it  a  vanquished  and  tamed  man. 

But  Italian  policy,  however  sagacious  and  clear,  had  in 
Luther  a  difficult  foe  to  deal  with,  and  Borne  was  destined  to 
find  its  match.  The  only  effect  which  the  observation  of  this 
aim  on  the  part  of  Borne  had  on  Luther,  was  to  excite  in  him, 
in  addition  to  his  original  grievance,  a  deep  and  inexpressible 
indignation  that  it  should  be  met  in  that  way  ;  that  the  only 
answer  to  a  witness  against  wron"  should  be  a  move  to  incar- 
cerate  him.  “Was  it  not  a  shame  that  these  people  set  so 
high  a  price  upon  him  ?  ”  He  saw  himself  regarded  as 
vermin,  to  be  trodden  and  stamped  upon  ;  as  something  whose 
proper  fate  was  simple  effacement ;  and  the  bitterness  of  a 


358 


Lilt  her. 


double  wrong  now  invigorated  and  sharpened  him  for  the  con¬ 
test.  There  mixed  with  this  indignation  no  slight  disdain  at 
the  idea  that  such  a  line  of  proceeding  should  be  supposed  at 
all  probable  to  succeed  with  him.  Awake  to  those  vast 
energies  which  were  fast  rising  into  life  within  him,  and  full 
of  conscious  power,  he  resented,  while  he  despised,  the 
audacity  of  men  who  could  presume  to  imagine  that  he  was 
to  be  caught  by  such  strategics.  Did  they  think  him  a 
simpleton,  or  what  were  they  thinking  of,  to  think  that  a 
possible  thing?  A  mortal  jealousy  of  Italian  subtlety  only 
put  him  the  more  on  his  mettle,  and  inflamed  him.  Luther 
was  peculiarly  of  that  temper  which  has  a  horror  of  being 
taken  in,  and  is  haunted  by  the  “  decipi  turpe  est The 
Italian  was  by  national  character  and  careful  cultivation  a 
diplomatist.  He  had  that  character,  especially  in  Germany. 
The  German  felt  himself  no  match  for  him,  and  retaliated  by 
dislike  and  suspicion.  The  dread  of  an  Italian  was  pro¬ 
verbial  ;  an  undefinable  notion  of  his  unlimited  powers  of 
deception  pervaded  the  mass,  and  one  German  warned  another 
as  he  approached.  He  was  advancing  now  to  the  contest  with 
his  practised  penetration,  his  easy  address,  his  whole  art  and 
science  of  management ;  and  he  promised  himself  an  easy 
victory  over  the  poor  simple  German.  Luther’s  gall  rose  at 
the  idea.  Would  he  find  it  so  easy?  and  would  he  find  him 
quite  so  poor,  simple  a  German  ?  Why  should  not  a  German 
assume  the  Italian  for  once,  and  establish  some  small  preten¬ 
sion  to  tact  and  policy  ?  It  seems  to  have  been  in  connection 
with  feelings  like  these  that  Luther  gave  himself  that  carte- 
blanche  for  dissimulation  which  he  used  throughout  all  the 
stages  of  his  struggle  with  Lome  in  which  dissimulation 
was  wanted.  He  certainly  did  meet  the  Italians  here  with 
their  own  weapon.  He  stuck  at  no  disguises,  no  professions 
of  humility,  affection,  reverence,  and  modesty,  which  simple 
language  could  supply,  whenever  his  position  called  for  them. 
Passion  indeed  is  the  prominent  feature  in  Luther’s  character, 
and  it  does  not  appear  at  first  sight  as  if  passion  and  dis¬ 
simulation  would  well  go  together ;  but  they  often  do.  Dis¬ 
simulation  is,  after  all,  only  a  tool  for  accomplishing  an 


Luther . 


359 


object ;  and  passion,  which  is  clear-sighted  enough  to  see  this, 
will  make  use  of  that  tool  as  it  makes  use  of  others.  It  will 
feel  a  relish  in  the  employment  of  it,  just  as  it  will  in  the 
directly  martial  and  openly  hostile  exercises  of  its  calling,  and 
even  exult  and  triumph  in  it,  in  proportion  as  it  is  alive  to  its 
peculiar  efficacy.  Indeed,  dissimulation  will  thus  become  a 
positive  expression  of  passion ;  its  success  affords  the  most 
pungent  gratification  which  there  is  to  scorn,  and  passion 
specially  delights  in  scorn  ;  the  deceiver  feels  that  in  deceiv¬ 
ing  he  humiliates  and  degrades.  Luther  was  as  powerful  a 
dissembler  as  he  was  an  assailant.  Formed  just  on  the  most 
formidable  model  in  the  whole  workshop  of  character,  with  a 
degree  of  passion  which  would  have  driven  any  ordinary 
mortal  into  madness,  he  combined  a  perfect  mastery  and  con¬ 
trol  of  it,  which  converted  it  into  a  tool.  An  easy  skill  and 
a  strong  hand  turned  it  about  at  pleasure.  He  did  what  he 
liked  with  it.  He  rode  it  as  a  skilful  equestrian  rides  his 
high-mettled  horse.  He  played  with  it  as  a  conjuror  plays 
with  his  balls,  jerking  and  recalling  them  at  will,  and  keeping 
them  tossing  in  the  air  about  him,  but  still  obedient  to  the 
centre  of  attraction  in  himself.  “  I  never  write  so  well,”  he 
said,  “  as  when  I  am  angry.”  But  the  change  from  super¬ 
ciliousness  to  deference,  from  rage  to  flattery,  from  hatred  to 
affection,  was  ready  at  a  moment’s  notice,  and  the  instrument 
always  gave  the  proper  note  at  a  touch. 

With  these  general  lines  of  policy  prepared  on  both  sides, 
hostilities  commenced.  The  first  act  was  a  citation  from 
the  Pope  to  Luther  to  appear  personally,  within  sixty  days,  at 
Pome.  The  indictments  were  framed  ;  an  ecclesiastical  court 
was  appointed  to  try  his  case ;  and  the  only  thing  wanted  was 
the  presence  of  the  offender.  “  I  saw,”  says  Luther,  “  the  thun¬ 
derbolt  launched  against  me  :  I  was  the  sheep  that  muddied 
the  wolfs  water.  Tetzel  escaped,  and  I  was  to  let  myself  be 
eaten.”  Thrown  upon  himself,  and  confronted  with  imminent 
danger  thus  immediately  in  the  contest,  Luther  met  the  emer¬ 
gency  with  the  utmost  coolness  and  self-possession.  There  is 
not  a  symptom  of  its  ever  having  entered  into  his  head  to  obey 
the  citation  ;  whatever  happened,  he  had  made  up  his  mind  that 


36° 


Luther. 


he  would  never  let  himself  be  dragged  to  Rome.  But  the 
resoluteness  of  the  determination  betrayed  itself  by  no  word  of 
violence  or  pride.  A  letter  from  the  University  of  Witten¬ 
berg,  with  many  expressions  of  deep  reverence  for  the  Holy 
See,  interceded  for  its  professor,  who,  “  on  account  of  the  state 
of  his  health,  and  the  dangers  attending  the  journey,  was  not 
able  to  undertake  what  he  would  otherwise  be  most  anxious  to 
do  ;  ”  adding,  “  Most  holy  father,  our  brother  is  indeed  worthy 
of  credit :  and  as  for  his  theses  against  indulgences,  they  are 
merely  disputatory.  He  has  merely  exercised  his  right  of 
debating  freely,  and  has  asserted  nothing.”  An  arrangement 
entered  into  at  the  same  time  with  the  Elector  Frederick,  that  the 
latter  should  decline  to  give  Luther  a  safe  passport  to  Rome, 
supplied  him  with  a  still  more  efficient  and  respectable  excuse. 

The  next  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  Papal  Court  was  con¬ 
ducted  by  a  Nuncio  in  person.  Cardinal  Cajetan  was  at  this 
time  in  Germany,  returning  from  an  unsuccessful  mission  on 
which  he  had  been  sent  for  exciting  a  war  against  the  Turks. 
He  was  commissioned  to  undertake  Luther’s  case,  and  received 
summary  instructions  “  to  get  hold  of  him,  keep  him  safely,  and 
bring  him  to  Rome.” 1  An  honest,  vehement  man,  without 
the  ordinary  tact  of  an  Italian  envoy,  he  was  accompanied  by 
an  attache  who  in  some  measure  supplied  his  deficiency,  Urban 
di  Serra  Longa,  an  Italian  courtier,  whose  long  residence  in  a 
diplomatic  character  in  Germany  had  familiarised  him  with 
the  national  character,  and  made  him  a  peculiarly  fit  man  for 
dealing  with  a  German.  The  Cardinal  cited  Luther  to  Augs¬ 
burg  ;  and  Luther  went,  receiving  warnings  at  every  step  to  be 
on  his  guard  against  the  sly  Italians.  John  Kestner  of  Witten¬ 
berg,  provisor  of  the  Cordeliers,  was  full  of  apprehension  for 
his  brother — “Thou  wilt  find  Italians  at  Augsburg,  brother, 
who  are  learned  folks,  subtle  antagonists,  and  will  give  thee  a 
great  deal  of  trouble.  I  fear  thou  wilt  not  be  able  to  maintain 
thy  cause  against  them  ;  they  will  throw  thee  in  the  fire,  and 
consume  thee  in  the  flames.”  Doctor  Auerbach  of  Leipsic 
repeated  the  note  of  warning — “The  Italians  are  not  to  be 

1  “  Bracchio  cogas  atque  compellas,  ut  eo  in  potestate  tua  redacto  eum. 
sub  fkleli  custodia  retineas,  ut  coram  nobis  sist&tur.3’ 


L  id  her. 


361 


trusted.”  Prebend  Adelmann  of  Leipsic  repeated  it  after  him. 
There  was  small  need  for  impressing  it  upon  Luther.  Arrived 
at  Augsburg,  he  was  waited  on  by  Serra  Longa,  who  took  the 
line  of  advising  him,  as  a  sensible  man,  to  submit  himself  to 
the  Cardinal  without  reserve.  “  Come,”  he  concluded,  “  the 
Cardinal  is  waiting  for  you.  I  will  escort  you  to  him  myself. 
Fear  nothing ;  all  will  be  over  soon,  and  without  difficulty.” 
Luther  heard  him  with  respect,  and  expressed  himself  as  per¬ 
fectly  ready  to  meet  the  Cardinal ;  but  he  wanted  one  thing 
before  doing  so — a  safe-conduct.  “  A  safe-conduct?  Do  not 
think  of  asking  for  one  ;  the  legate  is  well  disposed,  and  quite 
ready  to  end  the  affair  amicably.  If  you  ask  for  a  safe-con¬ 
duct,  you  will  spoil  your  business.”  The  attache's  assurance 
was  confirmed  by  the  rest  of  the  Cardinal’s  suite :  “  The 
Cardinal  assures  you  of  his  grace  and  favour;  ”  “  the  Cardinal 
is  a  father,  full  of  compassion.”  Luther  expressed  no  distrust 
in  him,  but  wanted  a  safe-conduct. 

The  safe-conduct  came,  and  Luther  presented  himself  before 
the  Cardinal,  secure  and  humble.  Prostrating  himself  first,  he 
waited  for  one  command  to  raise  him  to  his  knees,  and  another 
to  raise  him  to  his  legs.  After  a  silence,  in  which  the  Cardinal 
expected  him  to  speak,  but  Luther  humbly  waited  to  be 
addressed,  the  conference  commenced.  Cajetan  was  stern, 
brief,  and  summary,  and  simply  demanded  retractation.  Luther 
required  argument  to  prove  that  he  was  wrong.  For  several 
successive  interviews  the  same  game  went  on,  and  Luther 
suggested  argument,  and  the  Cardinal  repelled  it.  As  Luther, 
however,  remained  cool,  while  the  Cardinal  became  angry  and 
heated,  the  balance  of  the  discussion  at  last  inclined  in  the 
former’s  favour,  and  he  caught  the  Cardinal  in  a  trap, — one 
sufficiently  frivolous,  indeed,  but  according  to  the  technical  laws 
of  logic  acknowledged  in  that  day,  decisive  argumentatively. 
One  of  Luther’s  objectionable  theses  was,  that  “  the  treasure  of 
indulgences  vTas  not  composed  of  the  merits  and  sufferings  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.”  The  Cardinal  asserted  this  to  be  flatly 
contradictory  to  the  extravagantc  of  Pope  Clement.  Luther 
challenged  him  to  prove  it,  and  the  challenge  was  caught 
eagerly.  The  extravagantc  was  produced  and  read,  till  they 


Luthei 


362 

came  to  the  words,  “  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  has  acquired  the 
treasure  by  his  sufferings.”  “  Pause  there,”  said  Luther. 
“  Most  reverend  father,  be  good  enough  carefully  to  consider 
and  reflect  on  that  phrase,  ‘  He  has  acquired .’  -Christ  has 
acquired  a  treasure  by  his  merits;  the  merits,  therefore,  are  not 
the  treasure  ;  for,  to  speak  with  philosophers,  the  cause  is 
different  from  the  things  which  flow  from  it.”  Cajetan  had 
committed  a  mistake  in  being  enticed  into  an  argument,  and 
did  not  regain  his  position. 

Luther  having  puzzled  the  Cardinal,  and  done  all  he  had 
to  do  ;  having  noticed,  too,  symptoms  of  irascibility  in  his 
judge,  from  whom  he  began  to  receive  first  offers  and  then 
threats  of  a  safe-conduct  to  Pome,  resolved  to  take  his  leave ; 
leaving  with  his  friends,  first  a  note  to  the  Cardinal,  explain¬ 
ing  that  the  smallness  of  his  resources  did  not  allow  him  to 
protract  his  stay  in  Augsburg  ;  and,  secondly,  an  appeal  to 
the  Pope,  whereby  the  Cardinal’s  hands  were  tied,  and  any 
retaliatory  sentence  to  which  his  offended  dignity  might 
incline  him,  stopped.  Before  the  morning  light  he  mounted 
a  horse,  issued  out  of  a  small  gate  in  the  city,  which  a  town- 
councillor  had  directed  to  be  open  for  him,  and  left  Augsburg 
at  a  gallop.  His  feelings  on  his  return  to  Wittenberg  were 
those  of  bitter  merriment,  not  softened  by  the  sight,  which 
he  then  for  the  first  time  had,  of  the  written  directions  con¬ 
tained  in  the  Pope’s  brief  to  the  Cardinal.  “  The  Cardinal 
would  fain  have  had  me  in  his  hands,  and  sent  me  to  Rome. 
He  is  vexed,  I  warrant,  that  I  have  escaped  him.  He  fancied 
he  was  master  of  me  in  Augsburg  ;  he  thought  he  had  me  ;  but 
he  had  got  the  eel  by  the  tail.” 

The  issue  of  the  conference  at  Augsburg  wras  a  disappoint¬ 
ment  at  Rome  ;  the  fault  was  thrown  upon  Cajetan’s  stiffness 
and  asperity,  and  care  was  taken  that  the  next  Nuncio  should 
be  a  different  man.  Charles  von  Miltitz,  chamberlain  to  the 
Pope,  was  a  German,  in  itself  a  recommendation ;  he  was  also 
a  man  of  an  open,  frank  exterior,  and  abundance  of  bonhomie. 
He  and  Luther  met  at  Altenburg,  on  the  5th  of  January  1519, 
spent  several  convivial  days  together,  and  were  mutually 
charmed  with  each  other’s  company,  good-humour,  and  jocu- 


Z  uther . 


larity.  The  tone  of  Miltitz  was  most  grateful  to  a  man  in 
Luther’s  position  :  “  You  are  drawing  all  the  world  away  from 
the  Pope  :  as  for  taking  you  to  Pome,  an  army  of  twenty 
thousand  would  not  be  able  to  do  it ;  you  now  are  three  to  one 
against  us.”  He  laughed  over  the  incidents  of  his  journey, 
and  told  good  stories.  “  ‘  What  think  you  of  the  Eoman  seat 
[see]  ?  ’  I  asked  one  of  the  hostesses  on  my  road.  *  Seats,’ 
said  she,  ‘  how  should  I  know  ?  are  they  wood  or  stone  ?  ’  ” 
The  time  passed  pleasantly  away,  and  the  two  excellent  friends 
parted  with  embraces,  and  on  Miltitz’s  side  with  tears.  “  I  did 
not,”  said  Luther,  in  writing  to  a  friend,  “  let  it  be  seen  that  I 
thought  the  kiss  Judas’s  kiss,  and  the  tears  crocodile’s  tears. 
The  impostor,  the  liar  !  He  has  in  his  pocket  seventy  apo¬ 
stolical  briefs  for  leading  me  bound  and  captive  to  that  mur¬ 
derous  Pome.”  Miltitz  retired  from  this  and  a  subsequent 
meeting  with  the  notion  that  he  had  completely  brought 
Luther  round,  and  made  him  consent  to  silencing  conditions. 
But  the  conditions  were  nugatory  ones.  Luther  consented  to 
declare  himself  an  obedient  child  of  the  Poman  See  ;  and  con¬ 
sented  to  promise  that  he  would  invite  the  people  to  be  as 
obedient  as  himself ;  he  consented  to  be  silent  if  his  opponents 
were  silent,  and  finally  consented  to  the  appointment  of  some 
Archbishop  as  his  judge.  The  three  former  conditions  are  on 
their  very  surface  trifles  ;  with  respect  to  the  last  one,  he  did  not 
care  who  judged  him,  so  long  as  the  j udge  came  to  Luther  in  Ger¬ 
many,  and  Luther  had  not  to  go  to  him  at  Pome.  The  Nuncio 
was  as  completely  cheated  as  he  wished  to  cheat ;  and  Luther 
from  his  first  reflection  on  the  commencement  of  the  conference, 
“  I  know  the  fox,”  to  the  concluding  one,  “  the  farce  is  over,” 
showed  an  expertness  of  dissimulation,  for  which  in  an  un¬ 
tutored  and  inexperienced  man,  even  the  shrewdest  diplomatist 
could  be  pardonably  unprepared. 

Meantime,  as  regards  the  reforming  movement  itself,  the 
greatest  caution  was  exercised  in  the  mode  of  conducting  it. 
To  such  a  degree,  indeed,  did  Luther  carry  his  caution  with 
respect  to  his  theses,  the  subject  of  all  these  conferences,  that 
he  would  not  formally  admit  that  they  were  expressions  of  his 
own  opinion  at  all.  They  were  theses,  subjects  suggested  for 


Luther. 


364 

disputation,  and  upon  which  theologians  were  invited  to  exer¬ 
cise  their  argumentative  power  and  skill.  Some  might  take 
one  side,  some  another ;  he  had  never  asserted  which  side  he 
himself  took  upon  each  of  these  ninety-five.  That  he  had  a 
general  objection  to  the  present  mode  in  which  indulgences 
were  given  was  indeed  obvious,  hut  he  had  asserted  no  doc¬ 
trine.  Thus  adroitly  availing  himself  of  existing  machinery, 
he  nurtured  the  first  tender  seed  of  the  Beformation  under¬ 
neath  the  shelter  of  the  old  disputative  system.  Again,  as  he 
was  not  responsible  for  the  theses  themselves,  so  neither  was 
he  for  their  publication.  He  had  stuck  them  on  the  doors  of 
the  church  of  All-Saints  at  Wittenberg — the  usual  process  in 
announcing  subjects  for  disputation ;  but  who  copied  them 
thence,  or  how  it  was  they  were  now  circulating  through  all 
the  towns  of  Germany,  he  had  no  idea.  He  had  not  done  it ; 
if  others  had,  he  could  not  help  that.  “  Is  all  this  noise  made,” 
he  writes  in  his  first  letter  to  the  Pope,  after  the  publication  of 
his  theses,  “  because  I  have  simply  exerted  my  right  as  a  master 
of  theology,  and  disputed  in  the  public  schools  ?  Why,  this  is 
done  in  all  universities,  and  these  disputes  take  place  on  much 
more  sacred  subjects  than  indulgences.  What  fate  brings  my 
poor  disputations  into  so  much  greater  prominence  than  those 
of  other  masters  in  theology,  and  makes  them  circulate  all  the 
world  over,  is  a  miracle  to  me.  I  only  published  them  for  the 
sake  of  our  people  here  ;  and  how  the  mass  understand  a  set 
of  questions,  put  enigmatically  and  obscurely,  as  disputative 
ones  always  are,  is  incomprehensible  to  me.  .  .  .  What  can  I 
do  ?  I  am  not  able  to  recall  them  from  circulation  now,  how¬ 
ever  their  circulation  may  annoy  me.  I  find  myself  brought 
reluctantly  before  the  world,  and  exposed  to  every  sort  of  criti¬ 
cism  ;  an  unlearned,  dull,  ignorant  man  is  scrutinised  by  an 
age  of  cultivation  and  science,  which  could  drive  Cicero  him  ¬ 
self  into  a  corner.  It  is  my  fate  to  he  the  goose  hissing  among 
the  swans.  .  .  .  All  I  can  do  is  to  prostrate  myself  at  your 
feet — vivifica,  occide  ;  voca ,  revoca ;  approba,  reproba ,  ut 
placuerit.” 

Again :  “  I  have  nothing  I  can  do  ;  I  cannot  hear  your 
anger,  and  how  to  rescue  myself  from  it  I  know  not.  I  am 


Luther. 


3^5 


asked  to  recall  my  theses.  If  that  would  do  any  good,  I  would 
do  it  immediately.  But  the  truth  is,  that,  owing  to  the 
opposition  they  have  met  with,  they  are  circulating  more 
widely  than  I  ever  dreamed  of,  and  have  taken  such  powerful 
hold  of  many  minds  that  they  cannot  he  recalled.  Nay,  in 
this  age  of  intellect  and  learning,  it  would  he  an  injury  to  the 
Church  of  Borne  herself  to  recall  them,  and  that  is  the  very 
last  thing  which,  as  a  reverential  son  of  the  Boman  Church,  I 
could  do.”  The  attitude  which  Luther  assumed  towards  the 
Pope  was  that  of  a  person  who  found  a  great  stir  of  opinion 
going  on,  over  which  he  had  no  control,  and  which  he  rather 
regretted  than  not.  His  expressions  as  to  himself,  the  most 
debasing  which  language  could  produce,  confirmed  this  atti¬ 
tude.  “  Befuse  of  mankind,  and  dust  of  the  earth,  necessity 
alone  is  my  excuse  for  presuming  to  address  your  Blessedness. 
Deign  to  lower  the  ear  of  your  Blessedness  to  the  bleatings  of 
your  lamb.  The  lowest  and  vilest  of  mankind,  wretched  and 
poor,  I  prostrate  my  unworthy  self  at  your  feet.” 

We  approach  in  this  latter  specimen  indeed,  one  whole 
class  of  expressions  which  specially  arrests  the  eye  of  the 
reader  of  Luther’s  life,  and  upon  which  some  notice  seems 
required.  Luther  always  described  himself  as  having  begun 
his  reforming  career  under  an  all  but  intolerable  weight  of 
dejection,  the  consequence  of  his  own  low  idea  of  himself,  and 
exalted  reverence  for  the  system  and  the  men  whom  he  found 
himself  opposing.  “  I  began  in  great  fear  and  trembling,”  he 
tells  Erasmus.  “  Who  was  I  then,  poor,  miserable,  contempt¬ 
ible  brother  that  1  was,  more  like  a  corpse  than  a  man ;  who 
was  I  to  set  myself  up  against  the  majesty  of  the  Pope,  before 
whom  trembled  not  only  the  kings  of  the  earth  and  the  whole 
world,  but  also,  if  I  may  so  say,  heaven  and  hell  ?  No  one 
can  know  what  my  heart  suffered  in  those  first  two  years,  and 
into  what  depression,  I  might  say  into  what  despair,  I  was 
plunged.  ...  I  was  not  so  joyous,  so  tranquil,  so  confident  of 
success.  There  were,  it  is  true,  many  pious  Christians  whom 
my  propositions  pleased  much,  but  I  could  not  consider  them 
as  mouthpieces  of  the  Holy  Ghost ;  I  looked  only  to  the  car¬ 
dinals,  the  bishops,  the  theologians,  the  jurisconsults,  the 


Luther. 


366 

monks,  the  priests.  ...  It  was  thence  I  expected  the  Spirit 
to  breathe  npon  me.  ...  I  did  honour  the  Pope’s  Church 
from  the  bottom  of  my  heart  as  the  true  Church.  .  .  .  Had  I 
despised  the  Pope,  I  should  have  trembled  to  see  the  earth 
open  and  swallow  me  up  alive,  like  Korah.”  With  such  signs 
of  deep  humility  and  respect  for  authorities  did  Luther  conduct 
the  Reformation  through  its  early  stages,  and  the  question 
which  naturally  occurs  is,  How  much  of  it  was  real,  and  how 
much  of  it  not  ?  The  answer  to  such  a  question  is  provided  for 
us  by  that  science  of  character  which  an  increasing  general 
experience  of  the  various  forms  of  character,  subtle  as  well  as 
simple,  has  now  made  comparatively  easy  and  plain.  It  is 
quite  safe  to  say,  in  the  first  place,  that  Luther’s  mental  abase¬ 
ment  before  the  Pope  and  Cardinals  was  partly  real  and  partly 
unreal ;  and  it  is  equally  safe  to  say,  in  the  second  place,  that 
where  reality  and  unreality  divide  the  ground,  the  unreality 
almost  necessarily  predominates  over  the  reality.  Luther  had, 
to  use  a  word  of  common  parlance,  a  strong  element  of 
“  Jesuitism”  in  his  nature.  Without  saying  what  at  the 
time  he  did  not  think  or  feel,  he  could  throw  himself  arti¬ 
ficially  into  states  of  mind  out  of  which  such  thoughts  and 
feelings  proceeded.  To  a  mind  midway  between  two  systems, 
an  old  one  to  which  it  had  belonged,  and  a  new  one  to  which 
it  was  just  going  to  belong,  the  present  ground  did  not  wholly 
extinguish  the  past  one.  Minds  cannot  absolutely  annihilate 
their  former  state ;  and  if  there  was  a  corner  in  which  the  old 
feeling  existed  in  Luther’s  mind,  it  is  the  characteristic  of  such 
a  mind  to  be  able  to  summon  it  forth,  and  use  and  expand  it 
upon  occasion.  The  insincerity  of  such  a  mind  rather  lies  in 
voluntarily,  and  with  politic  aim,  exaggerating  and  inflating 
some  real  particle  of  feeling,  than  in  feigning  one  which  simply 
does  not  exist.  Luther,  in  moulding  his  attitude  to  Rome, 
threw  himself  into  a  state  of  mind  in  which  he  “  thought  the 
cardinals,  theologians,  jurisconsults  of  Rome,  the  mouthpieces 
of  the  Holy  Ghost;”  i.e.  he  allowed  the  imposing  and  magni¬ 
ficent  characteristics  of  the  Roman  system  to  have  their  effect 
upon  him,  and  impress  him  for  the  time  that  such  an  impres¬ 
sion  was  wanted.  An  act  of  the  will  produced  an  attitude  of 


Luther. 


367 

feeling ;  and  a  species  of  humility  arose,  so  subtle,  mixed,  and 
evasive,  that  an  observer  can  hardly  catch  it  with  sufficient 
distinctness  to  pronounce  accurately  what  it  was.  We  notice 
the  same  fine  and  intangible  character  in  his  apology  for  that 
part  of  his  conduct  which  showed  apparent  want  of  humility; 
the  appearance  being  admitted  and  thus  explained  : — “  Truth 
will  gain  no  more  by  my  modesty  than  it  will  lose  by  my  pre¬ 
sumption.  .  .  .  Who  does  not  know  that  nobody  puts  forward 
a  new  idea  without  appearing  to  manifest  some  pride  ?  .  .  . 
The  Bishops  begin  to  perceive  that  they  ought  to  have  done 
what  I  am  doing,  and  they  are  ashamed.  They  call  me  proud 
and  audacious,  and  I  do  not  deny  that  I  am  so.  But  they  are 
not  men  to  know  what  God  is  and  what  we  are.” 

To  this  general  rationale  of  Luther’s  reverence  for  the  Pope, 
Cardinals,  and  Boman  Church,  must  be  added  the  liberty  which 
the  religious  journeyer  sometimes  takes  of  expressing  to  the 
full  his  adherence  to  the  old  system,  till  he  has  consummated 
his  transition  to  the  new.  Luther  certainly  expressed  the 
fullest  loyalty  in  public  for  the  Roman  system  at  a  time  when 
it  was  impossible  he  should,  and  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he 
did  not  feel  it.  On  the  3d  of  March  he  wrote  to  the  Pope  : 
“  Before  God  and  His  whole  creation  I  testify  that  I  have 
never  wished,  and  do  not  wish  now,  to  touch  by  any  means 
or  craftiness  your  power  or  that  of  the  Roman  Church,  but 
confess  fully  that  that  Church  is  supreme  over  all,  and  that 
nothing  in  heaven  or  earth,  save  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  only,  is 
to  be  preferred  to  it.”  On  the  12th  of  the  same  month  he  wrote 
to  his  friend  Spalatin  :  “  I  know  not  whether  the  Pope  is 
Antichrist  in  person  or  his  apostle.”  If  asked,  he  would 
probably  have  justified  the  opposition  between  these  two  pas¬ 
sages,  on  the  ground  that  the  one  was  public  and  the  other 
private,  and  that  they  suited  respectively  the  two  sides  of  his 
position. 

Such  was  Luther’s  policy  at  the  commencement  of  his 
career.  Let  no  one  refer  to  the  success  of  that  career  as  an 
instance  of  success  attending  simple  boldness  and  impetuosity. 
Luther  was  always  the  politician,  and  a  resolutely  cautious 
one.  With  a  boldness  equal  to  facing  the  blindest  hazard,  he 


L  tit  her. 


368 

never  moved  without  a  definite  pledge  of  security.  He 
obstinately  insisted  on  safe-conducts.  “  Vivat  Christies , 
moriatur  Martinus ,”  he  exclaimed  on  his  journey  to  Augsburg; 
but  he  took  care  to  meet  Cajetan  with  a  safe -conduct  in  his 
hands.  “  I  will  go  there,  though  I  find  as  many  devils  as 
there  are  tiles  on  the  house-top,”  he  said,  before  his  journey  to 
Worms  ;  but  he  took  care  that  an  imperial  herald  conducted 
him  there.  He  proved  the  saying,  that  fear  mixes  largely  with 
true  courage,  and  that  the  better  part  of  valour  is  discretion. 
Follow  him  step  by  step,  and  you  see  him  the  shrewd  diplo¬ 
matist,  parrying  invitations,  rejecting  offers,  penetrating  dis¬ 
guises.  By  this  course  of  policy  he  kept  himself  out  of  Borne 
and  in  Germany.  He  kept  himself  among  sympathising  and 
admiring  friends,  preaching,  writing,  and  talking,  and  dissemi¬ 
nating  his  ideas  in  every  way.  He  gained  time  for  the  for¬ 
mation  of  a  party.  His  popular  winning  character  only 
required  the  congenial  national  sphere  to  act  in,  to  make  itself 
felt ;  and  to  be  in  Germany  was  to  grow  and  prosper. 
“  Martin,”  says  a  contemporary,  who  is  describing  him  at  this 
period  of  his  life,  “  is  of  the  middle  height ;  cares  and  studies 
have  made  him  so  thin,  that  one  may  count  all  the  bones  in 
his  body ;  yet  he  is  in  all  the  force  and  verdure  of  his  age. 
His  voice  is  clear  and  piercing :  he  is  never  at  a  loss,  and  has 
at  his  disposal  a  world  of  thoughts  and  words.  In  his  conver¬ 
sation  he  is  agreeable  and  easy,  and  there  is  nothing  hard  or 
austere  in  his  air.  He  permits  himself  to  enjoy  the  pleasures 
of  life.  In  society  he  is  gay,  jocund,  and  unembarrassed  ;  and 
possesses  a  perfect  serenity  of  countenance  despite  of  the 
atrocious  menaces  of  his  enemies.”  The  sweetness  and  fasci¬ 
nation  which  mingled  with  the  power  of  his  character  sent  away 
the  crowds  who  came  to  Wittenberg  from  curiosity,  disciples 
and  propagandists :  their  reports  brought  other  crowds,  and 
Wittenberg  became  the  sacred  city  of  the  new  school.  As 
the  young  student  of  a  distant  province  caught  the  first  sight 
of  the  spires  of  Wittenberg,  he  raised  his  hands  to  heaven  and 
praised  God  that  He  had  made  the  light  to  shine  on  that  city, 
as  He  had  before  upon  Sion.  The  disputative  exhibitions  of 
the  day  aided  him.  They  kept  up  excitement,  and  supplied 


Luther . 


369 


public  and  striking  scenes,  in  which  Luther  appeared  to 
remarkable  advantage.  All  the  talent  and  literature  of  the 
day  crowded  to  those  disputations  ;  they  were  the  amusement 
of  the  intellectual  world ;  people  came  from  the  greatest 
distances  ;  there  was  a  general  contact  of  minds,  and  the  for¬ 
mation  of  a  public  opinion  was  the  result.  It  was  at  one  of 
these  scenes  that  Melanchthon  was  gained.  The  great  dispu¬ 
tation  at  Leipsic  brought  together  all  the  young  theologians  of 
Germany,  and  Luther  did  immense  execution.  Pitted,  greatly 
to  his  advantage,  against  the  sharpest,  noisiest,  most  vain, 
impudent,  and  unscrupulous  disputant  of  the  age,  he  won  at 
one  morning  many  of  the  subsequent  lights  of  the  Reformation. 
Thus  serviceable  with  respect  to  the  mass,  the  same  interval 
was  equally  serviceable  in  gaining  over  nobles  and  princes  too. 
Luther  moved  in  an  age  in  which  not  the  many  but  the  few 
governed  ;  under  the  surveillance  of  German  Electors,  Dukes, 
and  Landgraves,  who  had  no  interest  in  his  doctrines  except  a 
selfish  one,  and  who  were  bound  to  watch  with  some  jealousy, 
however  welcome  he  might  be  as  an  opponent  of  the  Pope, 
the  career  of  a  popular  leader  and  mover  of  masses.  The 
moderation  and  caution  of  Luther’s  opening  policy  was  just 
the  feature  to  recommend  him  to  them.  Had  he  shown  him¬ 
self  a  mere  agitator  and  addresser  of  masses,  he  would  have 
stood  in  an  unfavourable  attitude  toward  the  Courts.  They 
would  have  distrusted  and  disliked  him.  Summary  suppres¬ 
sion  is  the  frequent  fate  of  agitators  ;  it  was  the  fate  of  John 
Huss  and  Jerome  of  Prague  ;  and  the  German  princes  would 
probably  have  stood  by  with  considerable  indifference  and 
seen  Luther  carried  off  by  some  Papal  envoy,  had  he,  like 
those  early  Reformers,  shown  himself  only  an  agitator.  But 
they  saw  in  Luther  the  politician  and  the  diplomatist,  and  they 
respected  him.  He  had  sympathies  with  Courts  and  Govern¬ 
ments  as  well  as  with  masses ;  he  had  obvious  weight  and 
solidity ;  he  had  the  stamp  of  practical  power  upon  him  ;  he 
had  all  the  appearance  of  one  who  could  found,  and  fix,  and 
not  only  preach  a  theology.  The  consequence  was  that  they 
took  to  him.  The  Elector  Frederick,  his  own  sovereign,  a 
timid  and  wavering  man,  who  would  have  been  offended  at  any 
M.E.-I.]  2  A 


370 


Luther. 


spectacle  of  simple  vehemence  and  passion,  was  his  firm  friend, 
and  a  considerable  body  of  princes  were  resolved  to  see  fair 
play. 

The  time  now  came  when  the  fruits  of  this  policy  appeared, 
and  when  Luther,  throwing  off  all  disguise,  and  breaking  fairly 
with  the  Pope,  was  enabled  to  take  his  stand  confidently  on 
the  ground  which  he  had  made.  In  the  April  of  1521,  Luther, 
having  already  committed  the  overt  act  of  rebellion,  and  burnt 
the  Pope’s  Bull  publicly  at  Wittenberg,  appeared  to  take  his 
trial  before  the  Diet  of  Worms.  No  contrast  can  be  imagined 
greater  than  that  between  Luther’s  whole  figure  and  position, 
as  it  actually  was  now,  and  what  it  would  have  been  had  any 
precipitancy  or  carelessness  handed  him  over  prematurely  to 
the  Eoman  power.  Tried  prematurely  in  his  career,  and  tried 
at  Borne,  he  would  have  stood  before  his  Boman  judges  a 
criminal  at  the  bar;  a  disturber  and  breaker  of  the  peace,  little 
more  respectable  than  a  common  highwayman.  As  it  was,  he 
appeared  more  as  a  conqueror  than  a  criminal ;  the  very  scene 
which  was  intended  to  suppress  him  was  his  greatest  elevation, 
and  his  condemnation  established  him  in  the  position  of  a 
successful  and  recognised  Beformer.  With  a  safe-conduct — 
in  the  circumstances  of  which  he  was  inviolable — he  presented 
himself  secure,  erect,  and  self-possessed :  he  could  not  be 
touched  ;  he  was  a  dignified  spectator  of  the  august  ceremonial ; 
the  great  man  whom  it  really  honoured ;  he  was  received  in 
state,  and  treated  almost  like  an  independent  potentate,  within 
the  Imperial  assembly.  Between  his  position  and  that  of  his 
ill-fated  predecessor  John  Huss,  there  was  all  the  difference 
there  is  between  a  prisoner  and  a  visitor :  Huss  went  to  the 
Diet  at  Prague  to  be  tried;  Luther  went  to  Worms  to  pay  his 
respects.  His  journey  to  Worms  was  a  triumphal  march. 
Every  step  brought  him  across  some  flattering  marks  of  sym¬ 
pathy  and  respect,  public  and  private.  As  he  passed  from 
town  to  town,  burgomasters  and  councillors  vied  in  their 
hospitality,  and  crowds  gazed  at  him  with  wonder.  On  arriv¬ 
ing  at  Worms,  princes,  nobles,  and  students  flocked  around 
him.  He  entered  the  hall  of  trial  and  saw  his  friends  on  all 
sides.  The  greatness  of  the  occasion  oppressed  him  indeed  at 


Luther. 


37i 


times,  and  in  private  he  had  moments  of  that  dejection  and 
nervousness  which  nature  itself  feels  when  going  to  figure  in 
extraordinary  scenes.  Simple  conspicuousness  is  oppressive  ; 
and  to  sustain  the  full  gaze  of  such  an  assembly,  and  go  through 
the  ordeal  of  question  and  answer,  in  a  way  which  became 
Luther’s  position  and  pretensions,  required  all  Luther’s  courage 
and  confidence.  But  his  real  position  was  already  made,  and 
now  he  had  only  to  act  up  to  it ;  for  a  whole  week  he  was 
pressed  by  the  assembled  Diet  to  recant ;  for  a  whole  week  he 
repeated  his  refusal.  An  imperial  edict  then  placed  him  under 
the  ban  of  the  empire,  and  the  ceremonial  was  over.  Nobody 
thought  of  obeying  the  edict,  and  the  terrible  sentence  which 
consigned  him  to  imprisonment,  and  forbade  anybody  harbour¬ 
ing  and  feeding  him,  passed  off  as  a  farce.  Luther,  after  a 
temporary  residence  in  the  Elector’s  castle  at  Wartburg, 
returned  to  Wittenberg,  preached,  wrote,  published  and  super¬ 
intended  the  formation  of  his  own  Church.  The  next  year’s 
Diet  at  Nuremberg  exhibited  the  Papal  power  in  a  state  of 
such  deplorable  feebleness  that  it  seemed  to  have  enough  to  do 
to  fight  for  its  own  safety  without  aspiring  to  conquest.  Chere- 
gat,  the  Papal  legate,  met  the  assembly  with  language  such  as 
Pome  had  never  before  been  known  to  use,  of  the  most  humble 
and  sad  confession.  He  acknowledged  that  the  Church  wanted 
reform,  and  the  See  of  St.  Peter  first  and  principally ;  Pome 
had  been  guilty  of  profaneness,  oppression,  and  all  scandals, 
and  reform  should  therefore  descend  from  the  head  to  the 
members,  and  purify  the  Church  at  large  by  purifying  its 
centre.  Elevated  by  this  language,  the  Diet  drew  up  its 
centum  gravamina  against  the  Poman  See,  and  with  much 
bitterness  of  tone  demanded  redress.  A  feeble  call  for  an 
execution  of  the  edict  of  Worms  was  quashed  at  once  by 
several  of  the  princes,  and  a  prostrate  Papacy  gave  Luther  not 
only  safety  but  triumph. 

In  reviewing  the  external  causes  which  fixed  the  Peformer 
in  such  a  strong  position,  we  find  an  intellectual  and  a  religious 
one.  The  young  and  fresh  intellect  of  the  day  was  mainly 
with  Luther.  Progress  was  the  word  ;  it  was  the  thing  to  go 
after  him  ;  Luther  was  all  the  fashion.  A  bold  original  mind, 


372 


L  uther. 


by  the  side  of  the  cut-and-dried  cleverness,  technicality,  and 
hackneyed  dispntativeness  of  the  old  theology,  captivated 
especially  the  yonng ;  it  seemed  as  if  people  who  held  back 
from  him  owed  an  apology  to  the  intellectual  world,  and  had 
to  show  cause  why  they  should  not  be  set  down  as,  however 
worthy  and  well-meaning,  a  sadly  dull,  old-fashioned  class. 
People  see  the  intellectual  defects  of  an  old  familiar  system, 
and  not  those  of  a  new  and  strange  one,  and  rush  into  novelty 
in  order  that  they  may  enjoy  the  sensation  of  possessing  truth, 
free  from  all  accompanying  sensation  of  drawbacks.  Moreover, 
the  argument  on  the  side  of  his  opponents  in  support  of  the  old 
system  was  contemptibly  feeble.  On  the  great  and  funda¬ 
mental  question,  which  the  dispute  instantly  brought  up,  viz., 
who  was  the  judge  of  controversies  of  faith,  Luther  had  a  really 
strong  ground,  and  intellectual  men  saw  it.  It  was  a  ground, 
indeed,  simply  negative,  and  on  that  very  account  a  much  easier 
one  to  maintain  than  that  of  his  opponents  ;  but,  as  a  negative 
argument,  it  was  irresistibly  strong ;  he  asked  them  to  prove 
that  the  Pope  was  his  judge — and  that  the  Poman  Catholic 
could  not  prove.  It  was  plain  that  the  latter’s  ground  was 
weak  here,  and  Luther  had  only  to  ask  his  question  in  order 
to  manifest  and  bring  out  that  weakness.  He  retired  from  the 
disputation  with  the  appearance  of  a  person  who  know’s  he  has 
given  a  challenge  which  cannot  be  answered,  and  demanded  a 
proof  which  cannot  be  given.  It  added  to  the  strength  of  this 
negative  position,  that  the  other  side  were  so  wholly  unprepared 
for  encountering  it ;  the  Papal  monarchy  was  a  first  principle 
with  Luther’s  opponents  ;  they  had  never  reasoned,  or  thought 
it  necessary  to  reason  about  it ;  it  stood  on  a  par  with  Chris¬ 
tianity  itself ;  the  fact  had  grown  up  with  their  growth,  and 
was  part  of  themselves ;  their  minds  simply  reflected  an  esta¬ 
blished  system,  and  could  not  put  themselves  ab  extra  to  it, 
as  argument  requires.  When  they  had  brought  Luther  to  deny 
the  authority  of  the  Pope,  they  went  away  pleased  and  tri¬ 
umphant,  as  if  they  had  gained  a  plain  reductio  ad  absurd, um. 
But  it  was  impossible  that  the  excited  intellect  of  a  new  school 
of  thinkers  should  not  see  the  absence  of  real  argument  on  such 
a  question.  The  abuses  of  private  judgment  have  sometimes 


Luther. 


373 


naturally  warped  the  intellect  in  favour  of  the  Papal  claims,  hut 
the  abuses  of  the  Papacy  then  exposed  it  to  the  examination 
of  a  not  only  impartial,  but  unfriendly  intellect.  An  unfriendly 
intellect  was  a  rigid  one,  and  demanded  argumentative  proof ; 
and  that  proof  not  being  forthcoming,  an  intellectual  triumph 
was  on  the  side  of  him  who  gave  the  challenge,  and  an  intel¬ 
lectual  defeat  on  theirs  who  had  not  answered  it.  The  puzzler, 
the  questioner,  was  the  victorious  party ;  and  Luther  repre¬ 
sented  immediately  the  intellect  of  the  day,  the  spirit  of 
inquiry  and  criticism,  which,  not  content  with  existing  facts, 
required  an  explanation  of  them,  and  went  back  to  first  prin¬ 
ciples.  Of  two  parties  who  were  combating,  one  examined, 
the  other  simply  asserted,  and  aimed  at  silencing  its  opponent 
by  that  simple  force  of  assertion :  the  sympathies  of  the  intel¬ 
lectual  spirit  were  enlisted  in  favour  of  the  inquirer,  and  against 
his  dogmatic  silencer. 

Again,  a  religious  reason  operated  in  fixing  Luther  in  his 
position.  Whatever  amount  of  religion  there  might  be  going 
on  within  the  Koman  Church  of  that  day,  and  whatever  aggre¬ 
gate  of  good  and  holy  men  there  might  be,  actually  and 
numerically,  in  her,  this  religion  did  not  come  to  the  top,  and 
take  its  proper  leading  place.  The  Church,  acting  as  a  whole, 
and  exhibiting  herself,  in  her  central  government,  through  her 
officials  and  mouthpieces,  in  her  managing  and  ruling  parties, 
showed  lamely,  in  a  religious  point  of  view,  before  the  world. 
The  profligacy  of  the  ecclesiastics  of  the  Eoman  Court  itself 
was  notorious  :  and  the  Bishops  at  large  had  managed  to  raise 
against  themselves  a  strong  popular  charge  of  pride  and  luxury 
which  it  is  impossible  for  the  fairest  reader  of  history  to  over¬ 
look.  The  particular  men  whom  the  Papal  Court  sent  from 
time  to  time  to  confront  Luther  showed  the  defect ;  they  were 
clever,  active,  shrewd,  and  elegant  men,  who  had  mixed  with 
courts,  and  who  had  taken  part  in  the  literary  revival  of  the 
age.  Cajetan  was  a  serious,  indeed,  though  an  ordinary  man  ; 
but  Miltitz,  a  sly  convivial  courtier ;  Eck,  a  vain  and  bustling 
disputant ;  Aleandro,  the  nuncio  at  the  Diet  of  Worms,  a 
literary  star,  whose  life  had  passed  in  the  thick  of  the  attrac¬ 
tions,  the  display,  and  the  laurels  of  the  Renaissance.  Cam- 


374 


L  uther. 


peggio  the  lawyer,  and  others,  were  men  simply  cut  out  on  the 
model  of  the  world  of  their  day  :  so  were  Prierias,  Emser, 
Murner,  and  a  whole  class  of  second-rate  controversialists.  But 
Luther  was  obviously  not  a  man  of  this  mould ;  his  was  a 
powerfully  and  strikingly  religious  mind.  Whether  his  religion 
were  a  true  one  or  not,  he  had  one ;  he  lived  for  its  sake ;  he 
was  full  of  it ;  it  inspired,  strengthened,  and  stimulated  him, 
and  made  him  what  he  was.  He  stood  before  men  like  a  being 
from  another  world ;  possessed  of  an  intensity  of  religious  belief 
and  ardour  to  which  ordinary  men  had  nothing  comparable ;  and 
which  the  world  gazed  upon  as  it  does  upon  any  transcendental 
phenomenon.  Out  of  the  whole  ecclesiastical  corps  of  the  day, 
not  a  man  was  to  be  found  who  could  meet  him  on  this  ground. 
Everybody  knows  the  great  weight  and  influence  of  “  signs  ”  in 
the  religious  department ;  people  have  always  sought  after 
signs,  and  always  will.  By  signs  we  mean  prominent  facts  or 
phenomena,  which  admit  of  being  supposed  to  be  tokens  from 
above,  and  suggest  that  supposition  to  anxious  minds.  Such 
signs,  though  they  depend  wholly  on  supposition — more  or  less 
natural — and  not  at  all  on  argument,  for  their  weight,  have  still 
often  far  greater  weight  than  any  argument ;  they  belong  to  the 
present  and  the  actual.  The  immediate  manifestation  of  God’s 
will  by  a  sign  is  more  attractive  than  that  which  takes  place 
through  the  ordinary  mediums.  And  under  the  head  of  signs 
come  not  only  positively  miraculous  and  unaccountable  facts, 
but  all  striking  facts  whatever ;  all  appearances,  or  postures  of 
affairs,  which  admit  of  having  some  or  other  particular  signifi¬ 
cance  attached  to  them  by  the  mind.  In  this  sense  the  absence 
of  religion  at  the  headquarters  of  the  Church  was  a  serious 
“  sign  ”  to  a  large  class  of  religious  minds  in  Luther’s  days. 
Luther,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  striking  phenomenon  of  the 
religious  class ;  an  instance  of  a  man  possessing,  and  communi¬ 
cating,  the  most  powerful  religious  convictions.  The  religious 
reason  thus  came  in,  and  Luther  gained  numbers  on  the  ground 
that  he  seemed  to  have  earnestness  on  his  side,  while  the 
Church  was  worldly  and  secular.  A  marvellous  combination  of 
the  worldly  politician  and  deep  religious  enthusiast,  Luther  was 
confronted  by  the  talent  and  tact  of  commonplace  men,  and  he 


Lilt  her. 


375 


rode  over  it  easily  and  triumphantly.  Legate  after  legate  and 
diet  after  diet  broke  down  before  him ;  they  could  do  nothing ; 
he  had  it  all  his  own  way.  He  succeeded,  for  the  plain  reason 
that  there  was  not  in  the  whole  of  Christendom  his  match,  and 
that  the  greater  man,  like  the  greater  momentum,  naturally 
prevails.  What,  indeed,  must  have  been  the  prostration  of  the 
Church,  when  in  the  person  of  Pope  Adrian  she  humbly,  and 
almost  on  her  knees,  implored  Erasmus  for  help  against  Luther  ; 
and  the  lukewarm  indifferentist  refused  it  with  the  remark,  “  I 
told  you  what  was  coming.’’ 

The  schism  fairly  consummated,  Luther  had  now  to  be  the 
champion  and  conductor  of  a  declared  reformation;  to  wage 
war  with  the  Eoman  Church,  and  to  construct,  superintend, 
and  provide  for  the  wants  of  his  own. 

The  war  with  Pome  was  the  more  easy  department  to  him 
of  the  two.  The  necessity  of  self-restraint  over,  and  the  policy 
which  had  hitherto  demanded  more  or  less  of  disguise,  now 
positively  directing  the  most  full  and  broad  exposure  of  the 
Papacy ;  such  an  exposure  as  would  soil  and  defile  the  prestige 
of  ages,  and  accustom  men  to  despise  and  trample  on  what 
they  had  hitherto  reverenced ;  he  had  only  to  give  full  swing 
to  his  feeling,  and  let  himself  be  carried  away  by  the  force  of 
an  at  once  deliberate  and  wild  impetuosity.  The  controversial 
tone  of  Luther  is  known.  It  must  be  allowed  even  by  his 
admirers  that  he  flooded  the  earth  with  his  abuse.  As  a  con¬ 
troversialist  he  was  literally  and  wholly  without  decorum, 
conscience,  taste,  or  fear.  He  did  not  know  what  it  was  to 
hesitate,  to  waver,  upon  an  epithet  or  a  gibe.  There  is  no 
appearance  in  his  style  of  his  ever  having  once  in  the  whole  of 
his  controversial  career  said  to  himself — Shall  I  say  this  or 
not?  He  said  whatever  he  liked.  Lie  consulted  strength 
alone.  If  that  was  to  be  bought,  he  refused  no  price.  He  wTas 
unscrupulously  gross  and  foul-mouthed  in  his  more  solid 
vituperation;  in  his  lighter  banter  there  was  that  extremity 
of  insolence  which  we  notice  in  the  derision  of  a  sharp  and 
low  crowd  at  a  hustings,  choosing  exactly,  in  their  battery 
upon  an  obnoxious  candidate,  the  terms  and  the  style  the  most 
offensive  to  his  self-respect.  A  royal  and  majestic  dignitary 


376 


Luther. 


(Henry  vui.  of  England)  engages  in  theological  controversy  with 
Luther,  and  is  thus  answered :  “  The  Lord  Henry,  not  by  the 
grace  of  God,  King  of  England,  has  written  in  Latin  against 
my  treatise.  There  are  some  who  believe  that  this  pamphlet 
of  the  King’s  did  not  emanate  from  the  King’s  own  pen ;  but 
whether  Henry  wrote,  or  Hal,  or  the  devil  in  hell,  is  nothing  to 
the  point.  He  who  lies  is  a  liar.  My  own  notion  about  the 
matter  is,  that  Henry  gave  out  an  ell  or  two  of  coarse  cloth, 
and  that  then  this  pituitous  Thomist,  Lee,  the  follower  of  the 
Thomist  herd,  who  in  his  presumption  wrote  against  Erasmus, 
took  scissors  and  made  a  cope  of  it.  If  a  King  of  England  spits 
his  impudent  lies  in  my  face,  I  have  a  right  in  my  turn  to 
throw  them  back  down  his  own  throat.  If  he  blasphemes  my 
sacred  doctrines,  if  he  casts  his  filth  at  the  throne  of  my 
Monarch,  my  Christ,  he  need  not  be  astonished  at  my  defiling 
in  like  manner  his  royal  diadem,  and  proclaiming  him,  King  of 
England  though  he  be,  a  liar  and  a  rascal.  .  .  .  He  thought 
to  himself,  Luther  is  so  hunted  about,  he  will  have  no  oppor¬ 
tunity  of  replying  to  me  ;  I  need  not  fear  to  throw  anything 
that  comes  first  to  hand  in  the  poor  monk’s  path.  Ah !  ah ! 
my  worthy  Henry  !  you’ve  reckoned  without  your  host  in  this 
matter;  you’ve  had  your  say,  and  I’ll  have  mine.  You  shall 
have  truths  that  won’t  amuse  you  at  all.  I’ll  make  you  smart 
for  your  tricks.  This  excellent  Henry  accuses  me  of  having 
written  against  the  Pope  out  of  personal  hatred  and  ill-will ; 
of  being  snarlish  and  quarrelsome,  backbiting,  proud,  and  so 
conceited,  that  I  think  myself  the  only  man  of  sense  in  the 
world  !  I  ask  you,  worthy  Hal,  what  has  my  being  conceited, 
snappish,  and  cross-grained,  supposing  I  am  so,  to  do  with  the 
question  ?  Is  the  Papacy  free  from  blame,  because  I  am  open 
to  it  ?  Is  the  King  of  England  a  wise  man  because  I  suppose 
him  to  be  a  fool  ?  Answer  me  that.  .  .  .  What  most  sur¬ 
prises  me  is  not  the  ignorance  of  this  Hal  of  England,  not  that 
he  understands  less  about  faith  and  works  than  a  log  of  wood, 
but  that  the  devil  should  trouble  himself  to  make  use  of  this 
man  against  me.  King  Henry  justifies  the  proverb,  ‘  Kings 
and  princes  are  fools.’  I  shall  say  very  little  more  about  him 
at  present,  for  I  have  the  Bible  to  translate,  and  other  important 


Luther. 


377 


matters  to  attend  to ;  on  some  future  occasion,  God  willing, 
when  I  shall  be  more  at  leisure,  I  will  reply  at  greater  length 
to  this  royal  driveller  of  lies  and  poison.  ...  I  imagine  that 
he  set  about  his  book  by  way  of  penance,  for  his  conscience 
is  ever  smiting  him  for  having  stolen  the  crown  of  England, 
having  made  way  for  himself  by  murdering  the  last  scion  of 
the  royal  line.  .  .  .  Hal  and  the  Pope  have  exactly  the  same 
legitimacy  :  the  Pope  stole  his  tiara,  as  the  King  his  crown, 
and  therefore  it  is  that  they  are  as  thick  together  as  two  mules 
in  harness.”  The  rage  of  the  great  monarch  on  being  addressed 
with  such  unbounded  freedom  is  evidently  before  the  writer’s 
mind  here,  and  acts  as  his  amusement  and  his  stimulus.  It  is 
not  difficult  to  see  that  the  writer  of  such  a  passage  as  this  was 
capable  of  higher  flights  in  the  same  department, — of  stronger, 
deeper,  more  passionate,  virulent  abuse,  when  it  was  his 
humour.  “  Come  on,  pigs  that  you  are,  burn  me  if  you  dare  ! 
I  am  here  to  be  seized  upon,”  he  addresses  the  Thomists.  “  My 
ashes  shall  pursue  you  after  my  death,  though  you  throw  them 
to  all  the  winds,  into  all  the  seas.  Pigs  of  Thomists !  do  what 
you  can.  Luther  will  be  the  bear  in  your  path,  the  lion  in 
your  way.  He  will  pursue  you  wherever  you  go,  he  will 
present  himself  incessantly  before  you,  will  leave  you  not  a 
moment’s  peace  or  truce,  till  he  has  broken  your  iron  head  and 
your  brazen  front.”  Luther  always  exerted  the  powers  of  a 
Comus  towards  his  adversaries. 

“  Their  human  countenance, 

The  express  resemblance  of  the  gods,  is  changed 
Into  some  brutish  form  of  wolf  or  bear, 

Or  ounce,  or  tiger,  hog,  or  bearded  goat.” 

A  series  of  caricatures  exhibited  the  Pope  and  his  adherents 
under  complex  forms  of  brutishness,  in  which  ass,  calf,  hog,  ox, 
elephant,  griffin,  and  fish  all  mingled.  The  “  Pope-ass  and  the 
Monk-calf,”  and  “the  Papal  Sow,”  were  accompanied  with 
explanations,  that  no  part  of  the  uncomplimentary  symbolism 
might  be  lost.  Nor,  while  Luther  searched  earth,  air,  sea,  and 
sky  for  epithets,  did  he  despise  the  commonest ;  he  had  even 
a  prevailing  bias  to  them  as  being  the  strongest — to  one  espe¬ 
cially  above  all  others — one  invested,  by  universal  consent,  with 


Luther. 


378 

a  kind  of  technical  and  legal  precedence.  Luther  is  unsparing 
in  decking  his  opponents  with  long  ears ;  “  They’ve  got  their 
ears  too  long  by  half,  with  their  hihau  !  hihau  !” — (some  critics 
had  reflected  on  his  Bible  translation).  “  Tell  them  that  Dr. 
Martin  Luther  abides  by  his  translation,  regarding  a  Papist  and 
a  jackass  as  one  and  the  same  thing.” 

But  his  mere  sallies,  after  all,  do  not  give  the  true  idea  of 
Luther  as  a  vituperator;  it  is  the  constant  mingling  of  the 
vituperative  with  the  subject,  whatever  it  be,  in  hand — its  in¬ 
corporation  with  his  style — its  unwearied  and  incessant  flow, 
which  astonishes ;  the  rush  is  sometimes  stronger,  sometimes 
weaker ;  but  the  floodgates  are  always  open,  and  invectives  ever 
issuing  from  Luther’s  mouth.  He  is  perfectly  conscious  of  his 
own  warmth,  and,  like  a  true  clever  man,  has  a  rationale  for  it. 
“  I  was  born,”  he  says,  “  to  meet  parties  and  demons  hand  to 
hand  on  the  field  of  battle ;  therefore  my  writings  are  full  of 
war  and  tempest.  I  am  the  rough  pioneer  who  has  to  prepare 
the  ways  and  level  the  road.  But  the  master  of  arts,  Philip 
(Melanchthon),  advances  calmly  and  gently  ;  he  cultivates  and 
he  plants ;  he  sows  and  he  waters  joyfully  according  to  the 
gifts  which  God  has  made  him.”  As  he  proceeds  through  the 
Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  he  sees  a  strong  resemblance  in  himself 
to  St.  Paul.  The  Apostle  occasionally  uses  language  of  strong 
rebuke  :  “  Est  et  nostra  eastigatio  dura  et  stylus  vehemens ,”  adds 
Luther.  The  Apostle  says,  “  I  would  they  were  cut  off  that 
trouble  you.”  “ Atrocia  ve7‘ba,  horribilia  fulmina”  remarks 
Luther  :  “  Paulus  acerbissime  perstringit ,  acerbe  invehitur  “I, 
too,  Martin  Luther,  contra  Papam  volo  et  debeo  sanctd  superbid 
superbire .”  He  forgot  that,  in  the  first  place,  St.  Paul  uses  very 
different  language  from  that  of  Martin  Luther ;  and  in  the 
second,  that  he  uses  that  language  much  less  frequently  than 
Martin  Luther  does  his.  The  comparison  overlooks  entirely 
what  is  an  important  feature  in  the  case,  the  question  of  quan¬ 
tity.  St.  Paul  does  not  anathematise  false  prophets  in  every 
verse  of  his  Epistles ;  and  an  epithet  of  rebuke  once  in  an 
Epistle  is  not  a  precedent  for  an  epithet  of  abuse  many  times 
over  in  a  page. 

The  truth  is,  though  such  an  explanation  is  no  excuse, 


L  nt her. 


379 


faults  of  temper  are  the  natural  faults  accompanying  strong 
powers  of  action.  Luther  could  not  have  done  what  he  did  if 
he  had  not  been  constitutionally  endowed  with  powers  of  action 
in  the  most  wonderful  degree,  and  to  possess  these  powers  was 
to  possess  a  never-failing  stimulus  to  temper.  Action  of  all 
kinds  is  connected  with,  and  depends  more  or  less  on,  the 
element  of  passion  in  the  human  mind.  That  necessary  state 
of  desire  in  the  mind  which  all  action  supposes,  in  order  to 
account  for  itself  and  explain  its  own  origin,  is  of  the  nature  of 
passion,  and  therefore,  in  literal  truth,  no  human  being  can  act 
at  all  without  some  passion  in  him  to  make  him ;  he  cannot 
walk  or  talk,  move  hand  or  arm,  bend  joint  or  sinew,  without 
it ;  he  cannot  open  the  door  or  shut  it,  or  step  from  one  corner 
of  the  room  to  the  other  but  by  means  of  this  element  in  his 
nature,  and  passion  is  the  electric  or  magnetic  power  which 
sets  everything  within  him  in  motion,  and  makes  him  the  act¬ 
ing  creature  he  is.  Thus  the  charm  of  active  bodily  exercises 
and  feats  of  strength ;  they  satisfy  a  certain  passion  of  action, 
as  we  may  call  it  in  our  nature,  and  give  it  play  and  vent ;  the 
process  of  climbing,  leaping,  running  up-hill,  gives  a  certain 
impetus  and  eagerness  of  mind, — which  would  otherwise  be 
in  painful  restlessness  in  consequence  of  inaction, — its  proper 
action  and  quietus.  And  on  this  principle  we  see  the  com¬ 
monest  kind  of  action  accompanied  with  passionate  excesses, 
or  what  we  call  temper.  Thus  few  people  will  remove  any 
obstacle  to  their  motion,  a  chair  or  stool  or  table,  with  exactly 
the  degree  of  strength  which  is,  and  which  they  themselves 
know  to  be,  sufficient  to  remove  it.  Some  will  instantaneously 
inflict  the  most  extravagant  superfluity  of  removal  on  the 
offending  obstacle,  and  most  persons  will  remove  it  more 
forcibly  and  farther  off  than  is  necessary, — not  that  it  is  of  the 
smallest  advantage  to  do  so,  but  simply  because  the  material 
comes  into  collision  with  their  powers  of  action,  and  those 
powers  are  fundamentally  connected  with  a  species  of  irasci¬ 
bility.  And  though  such  general  passion  as  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  all  human  action  hardly  deserves  the  name,  and  is  an  animal 
rather  than  a  distinctly  human  impulse,  the  blind  substratum 
rather  than  the  thing  itself,  its  quality  rises  with  the  quality 


380 


Lilt  her. 


of  the  action  with  which  it  is  connected  till  it  becomes  true 
human  passion.  Such  passion,  as  connected  with  power  of 
action,  appears  remarkably  in  the  characters  of  the  world’s 
great  men.  It  comes  out,  indeed,  often  in  their  case  in  forms 
so  frightful  and  extreme  that  we  cease  to  connect  it  with  such 
general  powers,  and  regard  it  as  a  distinct  disease ;  but  it 
plainly  is  connected  with  these  powers,  and  we  see  that,  but 
for  that  natural  strength  of  passion  of  which  these  horrible 
excesses  were  the  corruptions  and  embrutements,  these  men 
never  could  have  been  the  great  men  they  were.  The  Sylla 
who  decimated  Athens  because  an  Athenian  wit  had  passed  a 
joke  on  his  physiognomy,  and  who  on  his  deathbed  saw  Granius 
strangled  before  his  eyes,  was  the  Sylla  of  the  Mithridatic  and 
Social  Wars,  and  the  reformer  of  the  Eepublic.  He  wrote  his 
own  epitaph  correctly  :  “  Here  lies  Sylla,  who  was  never  out¬ 
done  in  kindness  by  a  friend  or  revenge  by  an  enemy that  is 
to  say,  here  lies  a  man  of  intense  passions.  Who  cannot  see  a 
a  connection  between  the  future  Napoleon  and  the  boy  who 
vomited  with  rage  on  hearing  a  reflection  passed  upon  his 
native  Corsica  ?  The  strong  powers  of  command  and  arrange¬ 
ment  which  such  men  must  have,  to  be  what  they  are  and 
bend  minds  and  circumstances  as  they  do,  require  passion  to 
sustain  them  as  a  tree  requires  sap.  Even  our  thinking  powers 
require  this  support  in  a  way,  and  the  most  purely  intellectual 
processes,  as  soon  as  ever  they  become  deep  and  difficult,  can¬ 
not  be  carried  on  without  a  force  of  will  which  latent  passion 
supplies.  All  things  within  and  without  seem  to  be  ever  try¬ 
ing  to  throw  off  the  empire  of  mind  over  them ;  events  get  out 
of  control,  ideas  get  out  of  control ;  affairs  will  put  themselves, 
as  if  from  sheer  malice,  in  the  most  inconvenient  and  awkward 
posture,  everything  happening  when  it  ought  not,  and  clashing 
with  everything  else ;  thoughts  fly  off,  disperse,  and  refuse  to 
be  brought  to  any  head,  and  the  mind  has  to  bring  all  into 
order  by  means  of  a  certain  natural  force  of  will  or  passion. 

“  Luctantes  ventos  tempestatesque  sonoras 
Imperio  premit.” 

Even  passion  itself  must  be  subdued  by  passion,  and  feel¬ 
ings,  as  they  swell  into  excess,  be  put  down  by  a  forcible 


Luther. 


381 


antagonist  will,  which  comes  from  the  heart,  and  is  in  a  sense 
passionate.  All  strong  energetic  action  having  such  an  internal 
accompaniment,  the  consequence  is  what  was  to  be  expected ; 
viz.,  that  from  the  lowest  up  to  the  highest  examples  of  energy, 
from  the  energetic  man  who  fells  timber  or  mows  grass  to  the 
energetic  man  who  rules  a  nation,  as  sure  as  we  hear  of  energy, 
almost  as  surely  we  hear  of  temper.  Industrious  and  cross, 
idle  and  good-tempered,  is  the  housekeeper’s  experience  of  ser¬ 
vants.  Raise  the  dignity  of  the  epithets,  and  the  same  experi¬ 
ence  applies  to  higher  agents  in  the  world’s  system.  The 
energetic  statesman,  ecclesiastic,  artist,  merchant,  poet,  is  ex¬ 
ceedingly  apt  to  be  a  man  of  temper.  The  wide  prevalence  of 
the  combination  is  of  course  no  excuse  for  it,  for  it  only  shows 
that  the  passionate  element  in  the  human  constitution  tends  to 
excess,  and  that  where  there  is  a  strong  temptation  in  a  par¬ 
ticular  direction  the  majority  will  yield  to  it.  Christian  prin¬ 
ciple  suggests  that  where  energy  really  interferes  with  Christian 
temper,  the  former  should  give  way  to  the  latter.  It  is  of 
more  importance  to  a  man  that  his  temper  should  be  Christian, 
than  that  he  should  govern  a  party,  a  nation,  a  church,  or  a 
world.  And  if  he  finds  himself  embarked  on  a  line  which 
necessarily  demands  a  too  great  amount  of  energy  for  him — if 
the  multitude  of  his  occupations,  and  the  despatch  with  which 
he  has  to  go  through  them,  and  the  interruptions  which  harass, 
and  the  intensity  of  thought  and  action  which  excites  him,  are 
too  severe  a  trial  to  his  gentleness  and  patience,  and  the  result 
is  that  he  becomes  proud  and  overbearing,  a  charitable  judge 
will  make  the  proper  allowance ;  but  it  must  still  be  remem¬ 
bered  that  he  is  responsible  for  the  issue  of  his  situation  upon 
himself ;  more  especially  since,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  he  put 
himself  into  it. 

Luther  had  enormous  activities,  and  had  that  strong  passion 
which  goes  along  with  them,  and  he  was  lifted  by  himself,  in 
connection  with  events,  into  a  position  which  demanded  the 
constant  support  which  the  whole  strength  of  his  nature  could 
give.  He  had  a  whole  cause  to  push,  maintain,  and  support — 
a  whole  world  to  oppose.  His  strength  carried  him  through 
his  work,  and  he  gave  it  in  reward  all  the  indulgence  which  it 


382 


Luther. 


could  possibly  demand.  The  war  in  which  he  was  engaged 
was  controversial,  a  war  in  which  words  and  not  swords  carried 
the  day.  The  strength  of  his  nature  consequently  was  de¬ 
veloped  in  the  shape  of  words.  His  fertility  and  ready  wit 
gave  him  peculiar  command  over  this  field.  Nature  gives  horns 
to  bulls  and  hoofs  to  horses ;  to  Luther  she  gave  a  tongue. 
The  word  always  came  immediately  as  it  was  wanted,  and, 
impetus  suffering  no  check,  went  on  till  strength  had  become 
coarseness,  and  coarseness  indecency.  Such  a  passionate  tem¬ 
perament  with  such  a  ready  weapon  hit  everybody  that  came 
within  reach.  There  was  quite  enough  for  Luther,  in  the 
simple  fact  that  a  man  was  a  theological  antagonist,  to  provoke 
a  strong  epithet.  The  disgust  which  high-mindedness  feels 
instantaneously  toward  anything  which  stands  in  its  way,  as  if 
nothing  visible  or  invisible,  human  or  divine,  had  any  right  to 
oppose  it,  inflicted  its  contumely  by  instinct  almost  before  it 
was  aware  of  its  own  act :  “  Why  do  you  oppose  me  ? — take 
that  !”  Frederick  of  Prussia  carried  a  cane,  with  which  he 
vented  a  perpetual  supply  of  abstract  and  causeless  indignation 
upon  the  backs  of  his  officers.  Luther,  in  addition  to  a  tem¬ 
perament,  had  also  a  motive ;  he  was  the  leader  of  a  cause. 
The  storm  of  nature  drove  on  with  the  directness  of  intention, 
and  knocked  down  every  obstacle  in  the  one  line  of  its  own 
motion. 

The  internal  conduct  and  direction  of  his  own  movement 
was  a  more  difficult  and  anxious  task.  It  is  easier  to  pull 
down  than  to  build  up  in  religion,  to  attack  than  to  construct 
and  maintain.  Luther  had  a  completely  new  ground,  both 
doctrinal  and  ecclesiastical,  to  make ;  he  had  a  new  doctrine, 
the  Lutheran  dogma  of  justification  by  faith,  to  propagate  and 
transmit  to  posterity  ;  he  had  a  new  society  to  form,  which  was 
to  be  the  keeper  and  transmitter  of  it.  It  was  absolutely 
necessary  to  construct  a  whole  new  system,  internal  and  ex¬ 
ternal,  doctrinal  and  corporate ;  that  is  to  say,  a  new  Church. 

To  enable  himself  to  construct  a  new  Church,  a  theory  in 
the  first  instance  was  necessary,  and  a  new  theory.  And, 
accordingly,  a  formal  theory  is  laid  on  Luther’s  works  for  this 
purpose — the  theory  now  so  familiar  to  us,  viz.,  that  every 


Luther . 


baptized  person  is  a  priest.  As  a  priesthood  makes  sacra¬ 
ments,  and  sacraments  make  a  Church,  this  theory  at  once 
supplied  Luther  with  the  power  of  making  a  Church.  Bap¬ 
tism  was  all  he  wanted,  and  baptism  he  had.  Every  baptized 
person  could,  as  far  as  principle  went,  administer  the  sacra¬ 
ments,  and  perform  all  the  offices  of  a  priest.  What  members 
of  the  baptized  body  should  perform  such  offices  was,  indeed, 
a  grave  question  of  external  order ;  and  the  founder  of  a 
Church  was  obliged  to  secure  order.  He  could  only  secure 
order  by  authority,  and  therefore  he  had  to  fix  upon  some 
authority.  But  the  only  authority  he  wanted  was  one  for  this 
external  purpose ;  and  such  an  authority  seemed  ready  made  for 
him  in  the  State.  He  made  the  State  this  authority,  and  the 
whole  question  was  settled.  This  theory,  however,  seldom 
makes  its  appearance  in  formal  shape  in  Luther’s  'works,  and 
is  more  commonly  implied  than  expressed.  It  was  practically 
the  only  kind  of  Church  he  could  found,  if  he  was  to  found 
one  at  all.  The  question  was  settled  for  him  by  circum¬ 
stances,  and  he  let  circumstances  settle  it  for  him  ;  he  had 
kings  on  his  side,  and  he  had  no  bishops.  The  great  doctrine 
he  had  to  promulgate,  in  short,  created  its  own  Church,  and 
sanctioned  its  own  priesthood  and  sacraments.  If  it  was  true, 
there  must  be  some  way  of  preserving  and  transmitting  it,  and 
that  way  could  be  only  the  establishment  of  a  Church.  A 
society  is  the  natural  keeper  of  an  idea,  and  Luther,  full  of  the 
truth  of  his  own  idea  of  justification,  of  which  he  considered 
himself  the  all  but  inspired  teacher,  made  a  society  in  what  way 
he  could.  The  established  channels  of  Ordination,  the  Episco¬ 
pacy,  the  Apostolical  Succession,  a  whole  system  of  external 
Church  appointments  which  was  coeval  with  Christianity,  went 
for  nothing,  in  comparison  with  the  necessities  of  a  new  doc¬ 
trine  demanding  some  mode  of  establishing  and  transmitting 
itself.  If  Luther  had  had  an  Episcopacy  ready  to  hand,  and 
ready  to  go  along  with  him,  he  would  not  have  rejected  it ;  but 
as  he  had  not  got  it  he  did  without  it.  The  new  Lutheran 
Church  rose  up  because  the  Lutheran  doctrine  wanted  it,  and 
appealed  to  no  other  sanction  or  right. 

But  Luther  in  establishing  his  new  society,  with  its  form  of 


L  uther. 


38  4 

worship,  prayers,  ceremonial,  and  whole  external  system,  pro¬ 
ceeded  with  that  caution  and  accommodating  spirit  which  have 
been  already  noticed  in  him.  His  great  maxim  was  that  the 
doctrine  would  create  its  own  proper  worship  and  its  own  ex¬ 
ternals.  He  therefore  gave  himself  no  trouble  to  put  down  the 
actual  ceremonial  forms  themselves  which  were  established, 
and  used  no  violence.  Preach  my  doctrine,  he  said ;  that  will 
do  more  than  any  direct  attack  upon  such  things  can  do ;  that 
must  and  will  undermine  all  the  established  ceremonial  and 
external  system  if  it  only  continues  to  be  preached ;  that  is 
worth  all  the  force  and  battery  in  the  world.  Thus  the  mass 
went  on,  the  same  vestments  continued  to  be  used,  the  images 
still  stood,  and  the  whole  interior  of  the  church  fabric  remained 
as  before.  “  You  ask  me  for  a  form  of  celebrating  mass,”  he 
writes  to  Spalatin  ;  “  I  entreat  you  to  trouble  me  no  more  about 
these  minutiae ;  let  the  conscience  be  kept  quite  free  on  the 
subject.  It  is  by  no  means  a  thing  of  such  importance  as  that 
on  its  account  we  should  chain  down  the  spirit  of  liberty  with 
additional  rules,  regulations,  and  traditions.  We  have  enough 
of  them  and  to  spare.”  Later,  i.e.  in  1526,  he  writes:  “  The 
mass  is  celebrated  with  the  accustomed  rites,  and  in  the  same 
costume  as  formerly,  the  only  difference  is  that  we  siug  some 
hymns  in  German,  and  that  the  words  of  consecration  are  in 
German.  Indeed,  I  should  not  have  abolished  the  Latin  mass 
at  all,  or  have  substituted  the  vernacular,  had  I  not  found 
myself  compelled  to  do  so.”  “  If  you  have  not  already  abolished 
the  Latin  mass,”  he  writes  to  a  minister,  “  do  not  abolish  it, 
but  merely  introduce  into  it  a  few  German  hymns.  If  it  be 
abolished,  at  all  events  retain  the  old  order  and  costumes.” 
The  adoration  of  saints  he  would  not  forbid  :  “  Let  each  follow 
his  own  interpretation  of  such  matters.  Truth  and  charity  for¬ 
bid  men  to  dispute,  and  also  arbitrarily  to  condemn  one  another, 
for  faith  and  charity  hate  sects  and  schisms.  I  would  resolve 
the  question  of  the  adoration  of  God  in  the  saints  by  saying 
that  it  is  a  thing  entirely  free  and  indifferent.”  On  the  sub¬ 
ject  of  relics  he  would  only  say,  “  I  believe  the  whole  collection 
of  them  has  been  already  quite  enough  exhibited.”  Purgatory 
he  thought  “was  very  uncertain.”  Confession  was  “a  good 


Luther. 


385 


tiling.”  There  was  no  harm  in  keeping  festivals  or  going  pil¬ 
grimages.  “  Ceremonies  are  not  necessary  to  salvation/’  he 
said,  “  yet  they  produce  an  effect  upon  rude  and  uncultivated 
minds.”  “  I  condemn  no  ceremony  which  is  not  contrary  to 
the  Gospel.”  “  You  are  about  to  organise  the  Church  at  Konigs- 
berg,”  he  writes  to  a  pastor;  “ I  entreat  you,  in  the  name  of 
Christ,  to  make  as  few  changes  as  possible.  You  have  in  your 
neighbourhood  several  Episcopal  towns,  and  it  is  not  desirable 
that  the  ceremonies  of  our  new  Church  should  vary  in  any 
marked  degree  from  the  old  ritual.”  Even  with  respect  to 
monasteries  and  nunneries,  for  which  he  had  such  deep  aver¬ 
sion,  he  took  and  countenanced  no  violent  steps.  Only  volun¬ 
tary  desertion  was  encouraged,  and  not  that  in  all  cases.  “  I 
would  not  advise  persons  advanced  in  age  to  quit  the  cloister, 
because  returning  helpless  to  the  world  they  would  necessarily 
become  a  charge  to  other  people,  and  would  scarcely  meet  in 
these  uncharitable  days  with  the  care  and  attention  to  which 
their  age  is  entitled.  In  the  interior  of  the  monastery  they  are 
a  burden  to  no  one,  and,  moreover,  they  are  in  a  position  to  do 
a  great  deal  in  aid  of  the  spiritual  salvation  of  their  neighbours, 
which,  were  they  in  the  world,  it  would  be  difficult,  nay,  I  will 
almost  say,  impossible  for  them  to  do.”  Of  another  case  : 
“We  should  leave  poor  nuns  like  these  to  live  on  after  their 
own  fashion.”  Such  was  the  cautious  and  dilatory  line  on 
which  Luther  had  determined,  and  to  which,  notwithstanding 
the  perpetual  siege  upon  it,  he  adhered.  Letters  from  pastors 
in  all  directions,  indeed,  pressed  for  immediate  decisions  on 
different  points  of  faith  and  practice,  and  innumerable  tender 
consciences  revolted  from  this  and  that  part  of  the  established 
system  of  worship  and  ceremonial,  of  which  each  wanted  an 
answer  from  him  instantaneous,  absolute,  and  on  its  own  side. 
One  and  another  pastor  was  for  immediately  abolishing  either 
confession,  or  saint-worship,  or  images,  or  the  reception  of  the 
sacrament  in  one  kind,  or  pilgrimages,  or  festivals  and  fasts. 
But  Luther  maintained  his  qualified  position,  and  adhered 
obstinately  to  ambiguities  and  negatives.  He  parried  the 
questions,  soothed  and  calmed  the  questioners,  advised  quiet¬ 
ness  and  delay,  and  ended  with  reiterating  the  favourite  dictum, 
M.E.-I.]  2  B 


Luther. 


386 

that  all  would  be  certain  to  come  right  if  the  doctrine  was 
preached.  The  magnanimous  ease  and  repose  of  the  great 
leader  of  the  movement  stands  out  strikingly  amid  the  petty 
scruples  and  small  activities  of  the  inferior  agents,  and  Luther 
submits  to  all  these  questionings  with  that  half-kind,  half¬ 
scornful  condescension  with  which  dignified  persons  submit  to 
any  bore  which  their  position  brings  upon  them.  “  The  whole 
world  pestered  him”  he  said,  “with  questions;”  but  as  people 
would  not  be  satisfied  if  they  had  not  answers  of  some  kind,  he 
sent  them  answers  : — an  amiable  weakness  deserved  some  indul¬ 
gence.  As  for  himself,  he  wanted  to  put  down  nothing  which 
his  doctrine  would  allow  to  stand,  and  he  would  let  the  doctrine 
find  out  what  could  stand  with  it  and  what  could  not.  He 
had  no  desire  to  interfere  himself  in  the  matter.  An  easy 
capacious  liberalism  objected  to  the  dogmatic  enforcement  of 
fasts  and  feasts,  vestments,  images,  and  the  like,  but  so  long  as 
they  were  left  voluntary  saw  no  harm  in  them.  Dogmatism  in 
rejecting  and  dogmatism  in  enforcing  were  both  condemned, 
and  the  spirit  of  Luther’s  reformation  was  in  some  aspects  a 
remarkable  anticipation  of  that  modern  Germanism  which  is 
associated  amongst  ourselves  with  the  name  of  Dr.  Arnold. 

But  Luther  was  compelled,  like  many  other  teachers,  to  see 
a  favourite  line  of  policy  broken  in  upon,  and  however  moderate 
and  procrastinating  his  own  views  might  be,  a  crowd  of  trouble¬ 
some  followers  were  not  to  be  wholly  coerced.  He  had  the 
pain  of  seeing,  one  after  another,  various  tendencies  in  the 
Beformation  prematurely  brought  out,  and  exhibited  in  exag¬ 
gerated  shape,  and  with  accompaniments  of  violence  and  horror, 
before  the  world.  Carlstadt  and  the  image-breakers  of  Wit¬ 
tenberg,  Munzer  and  the  fanatic  revolutionist  peasants  of 
Thuringia,  John  of  Leyden  and  the  Anabaptists,  diverted  the 
Beformation  from  its  regular  and  orderly  course,  and  disgraced 
it  by  monstrous  associations. 

Luther  was  in  the  benevolent  confinement  of  the  castle  of 
Wartburg,  where  his  friend  the  Elector  Frederick  had  placed 
him  after  the  Diet  of  Worms,  when  he  heard  of  the  iconoclast 
excesses  of  Carlstadt  and  his  party  at  Wittenberg.  In  addi¬ 
tion  to  the  evil  itself  of  such  excesses,  the  fact  that  a  vain, 


Luther . 


387 


shallow,  noisy  man  should  be  taking  advantage  of  his  absence 
to  assume  a  lead,  and  gratify  his  own  envy  for  his  superior — 
for  that  motive  was  deep  in  Carlstadt’s  mind — provoked  and 
roused  him.  He  first  wrote  letters  to  the  Wittenbergers : 
“You  have  rushed  into  your  present  proceedings,  eyes  shut, 
head  down  like  a  bull.  Eeckon  no  longer  on  me ;  I  cast  you 
off ;  I  abjure  you.  You  began  without  me ;  finish  how  you 
may.”  His  letters  producing  no  effect,  he  determined  to  see 
what  his  personal  presence  would  do.  The  monastic  gown 
laid  aside,  and  the  steel  cuirass,  long  heavy  sword,  plumed 
casque,  and  spurs  and  boots  of  a  man-at-arms  assumed,  he 
escaped  from  Wartburg,  and  suddenly,  amidst  a  crowd  of 
valets  and  a  cloud  of  dust,  as  Lucas  Cranach  has  painted  him, 
made  his  appearance  in  the  streets  of  Wittenberg.  His  next 
step  was  to  enter  the  church  (which,  strewed  with  the  frag¬ 
mentary  blocks  of  the  old  statuary  like  a  mason’s  shop,  gave 
ocular  witness  to  the  late  excesses),  and  ascend  the  pulpit. 
The  Wittenbergers  now  m  masse  before  him,  he  scolded  them 
like  boys.  “  Satan,”  he  commenced,  “.has  been  busy  in  my 
absence,  and  sent  you  some  of  his  prophets.  He  knows  whom 
to  send ;  but  you  ought  to  know,  too,  that  I  am  the  only 
person  you  should  listen  to.  Martin  Luther  is  the  first  man 
of  the  Reformation  :  others  come  after  him  ;  he,  therefore, 
should  command,  and  you  should  obey.  It  is  your  lot.  I  am 
the  man  to  whom  God  has  revealed  His  word.  I  know 
Satan,  and  am  not  afraid  of  him ;  I  have  hit  him  a  blow 
which  he  will  feel  a  long  time.”  Carlstadt  was  in  church 
during  this  discourse,  but  hid  himself  behind  a  pillar  to  avoid 
Luther’s  eye.  He  and  his  fellow-prophets,  Munzer,  Stubner, 
and  others,  made  their  retreat,  and  left  Luther  in  possession 
of  the  field. 

In  another  quarter,  the  Peasant  Sedition  gave  Luther  much 
annoyance.  The  peasant  population  of  Thuringia,  of  the 
Palatinate,  of  the  dioceses  of  Mayence,  Halberstadt,  and  Oden- 
wald,  had  long  murmured  under  the  weight  of  their  servitude, 
and  the  various  exactions  and  oppressions,  petty  and  great,  of 
the  nobles.  They  took  advantage  now  of  the  reforming  move¬ 
ment  to  rise  in  arms  and  assert  their  rights.  Under  the 


388 


Luther. 


leadership  of  Gotz,  “  with  the  Iron  Hand”  and  George  Metzler, 
they  assembled  in  the  Black  Forest,  got  possession  of  Mergen- 
theim,  and  compelled  several  counts,  barons,  and  knights  to 
join  them.  The  subjects  of  the  powerful  Count  of  Hohenlohe 
were  soon  added  ;  the  Count  himself  being  compelled  to  sign  a 
treaty  with  the  insurgents  for  a  hundred  years.  The  town  of 
Landau,  and  the  environs  of  Heilbronn  rose.  The  body  got 
reinforcements  daily,  and  town  after  town  opened  their  gates 
to  them.  Agents  from  the  main  army  dispersed  through  the 
several  districts,  received  oaths  of  adhesion,  and  imposed 
tribute — the  clergy  of  Mayence  paying  in  a  fortnight  fifteen 
thousand  gold  florins.  A  mixture  of  religious  and  political 
fanaticism  formed  the  basis  of  this  revolutionary  movement. 
The  insurgents  marched  under  the  banner  of  a  white  cross, 
and  to  the  music  of  the  Marseillaise  hymns  of  the  day.  As 
soon  as  their  body  was  compacted,  and  scheme  formed,  a 
public  statement,  divided  into  the  well-known  Twelve  Articles, 
set  forth  their  grievances  and  their  rights.  They  demanded 
the  free  election  of  their  pastors,  relief  from  various  feudal 
exactions,  and,  last  of  all,  release  from  slavery  and  villanage  ; 
and  they  appealed  to  Luther  to  sanction  and  support  their 
claims.  Luther  answered  their  appeal,  and  undertook  the 
task  of  mediation.  He  published  an  Exhortation  to  Peace,  in 
which  he  divided  himself  nearly  equally  between  the  two  con¬ 
tending  sides.  He  rebuked  the  nobles  for  their  rapacity  and 
oppression,  and  the  peasants  for  their  insubordination  and 
licence.  To  the  former  he  said  :  “It  is  quite  clear  that  you 
have  no  one  upon  earth  to  thank  for  all  this  disorder  but  you 
yourselves,  princes  and  lords  ; — it  is  you  and  your  crimes  God 
is  about  to  punish.  If  the  peasants  who  are  now  attacking 
you  are  not  the  ministers  of  His  will,  others  coming  after  them 
will  be  so.  You  may  beat  them,  but  you  will  be  none  the 
less  vanquished ;  you  may  crush  them  to  the  earth,  but  God 
will  raise  up  others  in  their  place  :  it  is  His  pleasure  to  strike 
you,  and  He  will  strike  you.”  To  the  latter  he  said :  “  Au¬ 
thority  is  unjust,  but  you  are  more  in  the  wrong  even  than 
authority ;  you  who,  not  content  with  interdicting  the  Word  of 
God,  trample  it  under  foot,  and  arrogate  to  yourselves  the 


Luther. 


389 


power  reserved  to  God  alone.”  And  lie  repelled,  by  Scripture 
arguments,  their  claim  to  release  from  villanage  :  “  You  wish 
to  apply  to  the  flesh  the  Christian  liberty  taught  by  the  Gos¬ 
pel,  but  I  would  ask  you,  did  not  Abraham  and  the  other 
patriarchs,  as  well  as  the  prophets,  keep  bondmen  ?  St.  Paul 
himself  tells  us,  that  the  empire  of  this  world  cannot  subsist 
without  an  inequality  of  persons.” 

Thus  far  the  position  of  the  insurgents  was  a  respectable 
one,  and  Luther  gave  them  a  modified  support.  But  a  body  of 
insurgent  peasants  could  not  keep  up  its  respectability  long. 
It  fell  soon  into  the  fanatical  leadership  of  Munzer,  and 
plunged  into  frightful  atrocities.  Under  the  watchword  of 
“  No  quarter  to  idle  men,”  they  massacred  all  the  nobles  who 
fell  into  their  hands  ;  in  Eranconia  alone  they  pillaged  and 
burned  two  hundred  and  ninety-three  monasteries  ;  and  their 
revolutionary  theory,  grown  monstrous,  demanded  the  universal 
levelling  of  social  ranks.  Luther  saw  immediately  that  he 
could  not  afford  to  mix  up  his  cause  with  such  a  cause  as 
theirs  now  was,  and  he  threw  them  off  with  characteristic 
decision.  “  Miserable  spirits  of  confusion !  no  mercy,  no 
toleration  is  due  to  the  peasants  ;  on  them  should  fall  the 
wrath  of  God  and  of  man ;  the  peasants  are  under  the  ban  of 
God  and  of  the  Emperor,  and  may  be  treated  as  mad  dogs.” 
In  the  event,  the  peasants  were  massacred  wholesale,  Luther 
actually  hounding  on  the  nobles  to  the  work. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  Luther's  conduct  in  this  matter 
should  have  encountered  criticism,  and  that  the  observation 
should  be  made,  that  he  favoured  the  peasants  at  first  and 
bitterly  denounced  them  afterwards.  While  we  see  in  his 
conduct  here,  however,  the  natural  vehemence  of  his  character, 
and  unscrupulous  summariness  of  his  policy,  we  cannot,  with 
M.  Audin,  accuse  him  of  inconsistency.  His  favour  to  the 
peasants  at  first  was  favour  coupled  with  advice.  If  they 
neglected  his  advice,  the  favour  was  not  obliged  to  last.  He 
told  them  to  be  moderate,  and  meet  their  masters  half  way  : 
they  took  to  massacring  and  levelling.  As  soon  as  he  saw 
this,  he  had  done  with  them.  Had  they  put  themselves  under 
his  guidance,  he  would  have  made  use  of  them,  and  stood  up 


390 


Luther. 


for  them.  But  as  they  chose  to  he  their  own  masters,  and 
behave  senselessly,  he  said, — Miscreants,  you  are  injuring  my 
cause,  and  I  will  rid  myself  of  you  as  soon  as  possible.  And, 
as  Luther  never  did  anything  by  halves,  his  form  of  throwing 
them  off  was — calling  for  their  massacre.  Bor  this  form  he  is 
responsible,  but  we  see  no  inconsistency  in  the  line  of  conduct. 
M.  Audin  regards  Luther  as  a  sympathiser  with  political 
fanaticism  in  the  first  instance,  and,  when  he  saw  the  results, 
then  turning  round  upon  the  actors  whom  his  sympathies  had 
encouraged.  But  this  was  not  the  case.  Luther  never  had  any 
sympathy  with  levellers ;  he  gave  no  encouragement  to  the 
peasants  to  become  political  fanatics.  He  had  strong  sym¬ 
pathies  with  regular  monarchical  and  aristocratic  power ;  and 
from  the  first  he  strongly  advised  the  peasants,  while  they 
claimed  freedom  from  particular  oppressions  and  exactions,  to 
submit  quietly  to  remain  in  their  established  servile  state.  M. 
Audin  makes  two  separate  addresses  of  Luther's  to  the  peasants, 
of  which  the  popularly-toned  one  he  dates  before,  the  aristo¬ 
cratically-toned  one  after,  the  excesses  of  the  peasant  war  ; 
and  hence  accuses  Luther  of  changing  sides  with  events  ;  but 
these  two  were  not  separate  addresses,  but  only  two  parts  of 
one  and  the  same  address,  qualifying  and  balancing  each 
other. 

But  Luther’s  bitterest  vexations  were  the  doctrinal  develop¬ 
ments  which  the  Beformation  now  began  to  show  in  some 
quarters.  A  hard  sceptical  materialist  spirit,  not  content  with 
the  freedom  from  the  law  of  works  which  he  had  achieved, 
began  to  empty  and  dry  up  the  channels  of  grace.  The 
Anabaptists  under  Carlstadt,  and  still  more  fanatical  prophets 
than  he,  attacked  the  sacrament  of  Baptism  ;  the  Swiss  under 
Zwinglius,  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord’s  Supper.  The  former 
denied  infant-baptism, — a  denial  involving  a  rationalistic  theory 
of  that  sacrament,  and  converting  it  into  an  imposing  rite  for 
impressing  the  mature  intellect.  The  latter  directly  rational¬ 
ised  away  the  mystery  of  the  Eucharist,  converting  it  into  a 
simple  memorial  and  symbol.  Luther  denounced  these  mani¬ 
festations,  and,  whenever  he  could,  persecuted  the  movers. 
Carlstadt,  already  driven  from  Wittenberg,  was  soon  again 


Luther . 


39i 


driven  from  Orlamund,  whither  he  had  retired  next ;  and  then 
soon  driven  from  Jena,  whither  he  had  retired  next.  Luther 
drove  him  from  place  to  place,  and  apparently  forgetting  that 
the  unfortunate  man,  if  he  lived  at  all,  must  live  somewhere, 
barricaded  one  town  against  his  entrance  just  as  he  fastened 
the  gates  of  another  upon  his  departure.  The  issues  of  the 
prolific  presses  of  Jena  were  stopped  at  the  shop-door  by  the 
Elector’s  officers  :  “  It  was  not  to  be  endured,”  said  Luther, 
“  that  Carlstadt  and  his  people  should  be  alone  permitted  to 
emancipate  themselves  from  due  submission  to  authorities.” 
The  author  attempted  to  fix  at  Schweindorf,  but  Count 
Henneberg  instructed  the  town-council  not  to  admit  him  for 
an  hour.  He  was  at  last  allowed  the  tether  of  two  little 
villages  near  Wittenberg,  where  he  and  his  wife  lived  by 
manual  labour,  one  digging  and  the  other  crying  cakes.  One 
attempt  to  reassume  the  black  gown  then  banished  him  from 
Saxony  altogether,  and  he  took  refuge  in  Switzerland.  “  Fana- 
tici  spiritus  ” — “  Celestial  prophets,”  were  Luther’s  terms  for  all 
this  tribe  of  theologians :  whatever  the  particular  subject  in  hand 
may  be,  at  every  turn  in  his  controversial  writings  and  commen¬ 
taries,  the  “  fanatic  spirits  ”  get  a  rebuke.  Disdain  of  the  men 
never  subdued  his  sense  of  their  mischievousness  ;  and  irony 
mixed  with  irritation  in  all  his  allusions  to  them.  Seldom  con¬ 
descending  to  argue,  he  asked  them  at  once  for  the  miracles  by 
which  they  proved  their  new  revelation,  and  not  having  this 
demand  answered,  dismissed  them.  In  the  well-known  inter¬ 
view  at  which  the  two  theologians  defied  each  other,  Carlstadt, 
always  aping  Luther,  cannot  meet  the  swing  of  Luther’s 
careless  contempt :  he  threatens,  and  Luther  laughs.  “  I  will 
write  against  you,”  says  the  former.  “Write  away,”  says  the 
latter,  “  here  is  a  florin  for  you,  if  you  do  it  well.”  Luther’s 
disputation  with  the  corporation  of  Orlamund  is  in  the  same 
style.  The  burgomaster,  accompanied  by  the  magistrates, 
received  Luther  at  the  gate  with  compliments  ;  Luther  barely 
saluted  them  with  an  inclination  of  the  head.  The  burgomaster 
commenced  an  address,  and  Luther  told  him  he  had  no  time  to 
hear  him.  They  proceeded  to  the  hall  of  conference,  where  all 
the  people  of  the  town  were  assembled  in  a  state  of  the  utmost 


392 


Luther. 


excitement.  A  man  out  of  the  crowd  began  to  shout.  “  A 
prophet,”  says  Luther,  “  by  his  voice  ;  I  know  them  all ;  your 
eyes,  my  friend,  are  like  two  hot  coals,  but  they  will  not  burn 
me.”  The  first  of  the  proposed  arguments,  of  which  the  sub¬ 
ject  was  the  lawfulness  of  images,  then  began,  which  ended 
thus  :  a  cobbler  of  Orlamund  loquitur : — “  The  text  of  Deutero¬ 
nomy  is  clear ;  ‘  Lest  ye  corrupt  yourselves,  and  make  you  a 
graven  image,  the  similitude  of  any  figure,  the  likeness  of  male 
or  female — ’  ”  Luther,  “  Go  on.”  “  And  lest  thou  lift  up  thine 
eyes  into  heaven,  and  when  thou  seest  the  sun,  and  the  moon, 
and  the  stars,  should  be  drawn  to  worship  them.”  Luther,  “  So, 
then,  you  would  take  the  sun  and  the  moon  out  of  the  creation  ?” 
Cobbler,  “The  sun  and  the  moon  were  not  made  by  us.” 
Luther,  “Well  then,  you  condemn  me,  do  you?”  Cobbler, 
“  Certainly  :  you  and  all  who  do  not  preach  God’s  word.” 
Luther,  mounting  his  carriage,  “Farewell,  then.”  All  the 
corporation — “What,  not  one  word  with  you  on  the  Sacra¬ 
ments  ?  ”  Luther,  “  Eead  my  books.” 

But  the  rising  rationalistic  view  of  the  Lord’s  Supper  was 
Luther’s  great  trouble,  as  he  surveyed  the  working  of  the 
Beformation  ;  and  Zwinglius  was  the  great  thorn  in  his  side. 
In  him  he  saw  an  undeniably  able  rival ;  stern,  strong,  and 
hard  as  a  flint ;  who  threatened  to  wrench  the  Beformation 
out  of  his  grasp,  carry  it  in  another  direction  from  that  in 
which  it  had  started,  and  infuse  a  different  spirit  into  it  from 
that  which  its  original  author  had  given. 

The  strong  faith  and  reverence  which  Luther  always  pro¬ 
fessed  with  respect  to  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord’s  Supper,  the 
pertinacity  with  which  he  clung  to  the  idea  of  mystery  and 
grace  in  connection  with  it,  the  awe  in  which  he  stood  of  the 
inspired  words  of  institution,  and  constant  vindication  of  their 
obvious  and  full  meaning  for  them,  form  a  remarkable,  and  at 
first  sight  not  very  intelligible  contrast  with  his  perfectly  free- 
and-easy  treatment  of  Scripture  wdien  he  comes  across  it  on 
another  great  subject.  On  the  subject  of  the  Lord’s  Supper  the 
sacred  text  chained  and  overpowered  him  :  he  professed  that 
he  could  not  get  over  the  words,  “  This  is  my  body,”  “  This  is 
my  blood,”  and  dare  not  trifle  with  them.  They  confronted 


Luther. 


393 


liim  on  the  page  of  Scripture,  and  he  submitted  to  them.  He 
said  he  had  tried  to  get  over  them,  but  found  he  could  not ; 
that  they  had  stood  in  his  way,  and  that  he  would  have  been 
too  glad  to  have  explained  them  away,  if  he  had  not  on 
approaching  them,  found  them  too  strong  for  him ;  that  the 
tempter  had  especially  assailed  him  on  this  point,  and  had  not 
moved  him.  “  I  confess,”  he  says,  “  that  if  any  had  shown  me 
five  years  ago,  that,  in  the  holy  sacrament  there  is  nothing  but 
bread  and  wine,  he  would  have  rendered  me  a  great  service. 
I  had  at  that  time  powerful  temptations  assailing  me  ;  I  turned 
and  twisted  about ;  I  struggled  fiercely  with  my  own  thoughts  ; 
I  should  have  been  most  joyful  to  have  extricated  myself  from 
the  doubts  and  difficulties  which  surrounded  me.  I  saw  well 
that  if  I  could  have  made  up  my  mind  on  that  point,  I 
should  inflict  a  most  terrible  blow  on  Papism.  But,  upon  this 
matter,  I  am  chained  up  in  a  prison  I  cannot  quit :  the  text 
is  too  powerful ;  nothing  I  have  ever  heard  has  lessened  its 
effects  upon  my  mind.”  Such  was  Luther’s  scrupulousness 
with  respect  to  the  text  of  Scripture  on  this  subject,  his 
adherence  to  obvious  signification,  and  dislike  of  explanation. 
But  it  was  very  different  when  he  had  to  support  his  doctrine 
of  justification  by  faith  and  the  non-necessity  of  works.  There 
was  no  liberty  then  which  he  was  not  ready  to  take  with  the 
sacred  text.  He  found  the  Hew  Testament  in  every  page 
appealing  to  a  law  which  he  declared  the  Hew  Testament  had 
abolished  ;  and  he  explained  Scripture  away  on  as  large  and 
wholesale  a  scale  as  the  extent  of  the  obstacles  demanded. 
He  laid  down  a  distinction  between  being  in  the  Gospel,  and 
being  part  of  the  Gospel.  The  Gospel  had  precepts  in  it 
which  were  not  part  of  it,  but  only  appendages  to  it.  “  Quae 
praecepta  in  Evangelio  inveniuntur,  ista  non  sunt  Evangelium, 
sed  expositiones  legis  et  appendices  Evangelii.”  The  Gospel 
contained  precepts  just  as  it  contained  miracles,  not  as  essential 
to  its  system,  but  only  as  an  accidental  accompaniment  of  its 
institution.  “  Hon  est  proprium  Christi  officium,  propter  quod 
praecipue  venit  in  mundum,  docere  legem,  sed  accidentale. 
Cujusmodi  erat  et  hoc  quod  sanabat  infirmos,  excitabat  mortuos, 
benefaciebat  indignos,  consolabatur  afflictos.  Ea  quidem 


394 


Luther. 


gloriosa  et  divina  opera  et  beneficia  sunt,  sed  non  propria 
Christi.” 1  Lutlier  like  an  expert  chemist  thus  analysed  the  rude 
material  of  the  Gospel,  and  discriminated  between  what  was 
substantial  in  it,  and  what  was  not ;  what  was  genuine  Gospel, 
and  what  was  the  old  law,  introduced,  but  not  incorporated. 
When  pushed  another  step  in  the  argument,  and  asked  to 
account  for  the  introduction  of  the  law,  if  it  was  not  part  of  the 
system,  he  had  a  further  explanation  ready.  There  was,  he 
confessed,  a  whole  legal  machinery  in  the  Gospel ;  good  works 
being  commanded,  and  reward  and  punishment  being  made 
dependent  on  the  performance  ;  but  this  machinery  was  only 
a  contrivance  on  the  part  of  the  Gospel  to  expose  ultimately, 
with  so  much  greater  force,  the  emptiness  of  works.  It  was 
said,  indeed,  if  you  do  the  work,  you  will  have  the  reward ; 
but  that  “  if  ”  was  not  a  promissory,  but  a  defying  one  :  its 
meaning  was,  you  will  not  do  the  work,  and  you  will  not 
deserve  the  reward  ;  you  will  find  that  your  labour  is  vain, 
and  your  work  nothing.  “The  what,  and  the  how,  of  the 
reward,”  says  Luther,  “  are  not  the  question ;  the  question  is 
whether  you  can  do  the  thing  for  which  the  reward  is  offered.” 
“  Homo  prcecepto  impossibili  monetur,  ut  videat  suam  impoten- 
tiam  ”  In  this  way  the  whole  system  of  law  and  precept 
which  confronts  us  on  the  very  surface  of  Scripture,  was  re¬ 
duced,  by  a  method  of  esoteric  interpretation,  into  a  mere  husk 
and  outside ;  the  external  fabric  of  the  deeper  truth  that  there 
was  no  law.  The  surface  was  for  the  natural  man,  the  truth  was 
for  the  believer.  The  Gospel  language  was  only  a  pious  fraud, 
and  the  issue  showed  the  real  meaning  ;  just  as  when  in  some 
puzzle  or  piece  of  legerdemain  the  reality  turns  out  to  be  the 
very  contrary  of  the  phenomenon. 

Having  up  to  a  certain  point  contented  himself  with  ex- 

1  It  will  be  observed  that  the  argument  here  is  not  stated  strongly 
enough  for  Luther’s  conclusion  ;  for  it  is  not  enough  for  proving  that  pre¬ 
cepts  are  not  a  substantial  part  of  the  Gospel,  to  say  that  they  are  not 
propria,  i.e.  the  peculiar  and  exclusive  characteristic  of  it.  Nobody  asserts 
that  the  law  is  the  peculiar  characteristic  of  the  new  dispensation  ;  all  that 
is  maintained  is,  that  the  law  goes  on  under  it,  as  well  as  under  the  old  one, 
and  is  not  done  away  with.  Luther’s  non-propria,  then,  must  be  strength¬ 
ened  into  a  stronger  epithet,  and  be  understood  to  mean  not  essential  to,  as 
well  as  not  peculiar  to  it,  if  the  argument  is  to  be  consistent. 


L  uther. 


395 


plaining  away  Scripture,  Luther  now  advanced  further,  and  pro¬ 
ceeded  to  disown  Scripture.  The  Epistle  of  St.  Janies,  though 
opposing  no  insurmountable  difficulties  to  the  free  interpreter, 
— as  what  language  does  ? — was  still  a  very  difficult  epistle 
to  surmount  :  it  was  questionable  whether  the  violence  which 
would  be  necessary  for  its  explanation  would  be  greater  than 
that  of  rejecting  the  epistle  altogether  ;  and  Luther,  hesitating 
a  good  deal  between  the  two  methods  of  dealing  with  it,  inclines 
on  the  whole  to  the  latter.  He  gives  his  view  in  his  preface  to 
the  Epistles  of  St.  James  and  St.  Jude  : 1 — 

“  1.  This  Epistle  of  St.  James,  though  it  is  rejected  by  the 
ancients,  I  praise  and  hold  to  be  good,  because  it  advances  not  any 
human  doctrine,  and  urges  strongly  the  law  of  God.  But  to  give 
my  own  opinion  of  it,  without  prejudice  to  any  other  man’s,  I  con¬ 
sider  it  to  be  the  production  of  no  apostle,  and  this  is  my  judg¬ 
ment  : 

“  2.  In  the  first  place,  because  directly  contrary  to  St.  Paul  and 
to  all  the  rest  of  the  Scripture,  it  ascribes  righteousness  to  works, 
and  says  :  Abraham  was  justified  by  his  works ,  when  he  had  offered  his 
son ;  wffiile  St.  Paul  (Rom.  iv.  2,  3)  teaches,  on  the  contrary,  that 
Abraham  without  works  was  justified  by  his  faith  only,  and  proves 
from  Moses  (Gen.  xv.  6)  that  justification  to  have  been  before  he 
had  offered  his  son.  Now,  even  though  it  were  possible  to  bolster 
up  this  Epistle,  and  find  some  gloss  for  such  justification  by  works, 
still  it  cannot  be  defended  in  this,  that  in  ch.  ii.  23,  it  quotes  the 
aforesaid  passage  from  Moses  (Gen.  xv.  6),  which  speaks  of  Abra¬ 
ham’s  faith  only,  and  not  of  his  works,  and  is  so  quoted  by  St. 
Paul  (Rom.  iv.  3)  as  referring  to  works.  Therefore  this  error  is 
conclusive  that  it  is  the  work  of  no  apostle. 

“  3.  In  the  second  place,  because,  while  he  professes  to  be  teach¬ 
ing  Christian  people,  he  never  once  thinks,  in  all  the  length  of  that 
his  instruction,  of  the  Passion,  the  Resurrection,  or  the  Spirit  of 
Christ.  He  names  Christ,  indeed,  now  and  then  ;  but  he  teaches 
not  about  him,  but  speaks  only  of  a  general  faith  in  God.  For  the 
duty  of  a  true  apostle  is  to  preach  of  the  Passion,  and  Resurrec¬ 
tion,  and  Office  of  Christ,  and  to  lay  the  foundation  of  that  same 
faith  :  as  He  Himself  says,  John  xv.  27,  Ye  shall  bear  witness  of  me. 
And  herein  all  the  holy  books  that  are  truly  such  do  agree,  that 
they  all  with  one  accord  preach  and  urge  Christ.  And  this  is  the 

1  Luther’s  Works,  ed.  Walch,  Halle,  a.d.  1744,  vol.  xiv.  p.  149  ;  Preface 
to  the  Epistles  of  St.  James  and  St.  Jude. 


396 


Luther. 


true  toucli-stone  wherewith  to  convict  all  books,  the  seeing  whether 
they  urge  Christ  or  no  ;  since  all  the  Scripture  points  to  Christ 
(Rom.  iii.  21),  and  St.  Paul  will  know  nothing  but  Christ  (1  Cor.  ii.  2). 
Whatsoever  teaches  not  Christ,  that  is  not  apostolical,  even  though 
St.  Peter  or  St.  Paul  taught  it.  On  the  other  hand,  whatever 
preaches  Christ,  that  is  apostolical,  though  it  were  Judas,  Ananias, 
Pilate,  and  Herod’s  work. 

“  4.  But  this  James  does  nothing  more  than  insist  on  the  law 
and  its  works,  and  rings  the  changes  upon  them  to  such  excess,  that 
it  gives  me  the  impression  he  must  have  been  some  good  pious  man, 
who  had  got  hold  of  some  sentences  from  the  disciples  of  the 
apostles,  and  so  put  them  on  paper.  Or  it  may  have  been  perhaps 
written  from  his  preaching  by  some  one  else.  He  calls  (ch.  i.  25) 
the  law  a  law  of  liberty,  while  St.  Paul,  on  the  contrary,  calls  it  a 
law  of  bondage ,  of  wrath ,  of  death,  and  of  sin.  (Cal.  iii.  23,  24  ; 
Rom.  vii.  11,  23.) 

“  5.  Besides  he  introduces  texts  from  St.  Peter  (1  Pet.  iv.  8), 
Charity  covereth  a  multitude  of  sins  ;  and  (ch.  v.  1 6),  Humble  yourselves 
under  the  hand  of  God  ;  also  (ch.  iv.  5)  a  text  from  St.  Paul  (Cal. 
v.  1 7),  The  spirit  lusteth  to  envy.  Moreover,  its  spuriousness  appears 
plainly  from  this,  that  while  St.  James  in  point  of  chronology  was 
slain  by  Herod  at  Jerusalem  before  Peter,  this  author  must  have 
lived  long  after  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul. 

“  6.  Upon  the  whole,  he  undertakes  to  put  down  all  those  who 
trusted  to  faith  without  works,  and  he  is  unequal  to  his  task  :  he 
seeks  to  effect  that  by  inculcation  of  the  law  which  the  apostles 
effect  by  incentives  to  love.  For  these  reasons  I  cannot  place  him 
among  the  genuine  canonical  books ;  still  neither  do  I  gainsay  any 
man  to  place  and  value  this  book  as  he  may  list  :  for  otherwise 
there  are  in  it  many  good  sentences/’ 

This  concluding  paragraph  runs  in  the  edition  of  1522 
thus : — 

“Upon  the  whole,  he  undertakes  to  put  down  those  who 
trusted  to  faith  only  without  works,  and  he  is  in  spirit,  under¬ 
standing,  and  language,  unequal  to  his  task.  He  wrests  Scripture, 
and  what  is  more,  contradicts  Paul  and  all  the  Scriptures,  seeking 
to  effect  by  inculcation  of  the  law  that  which  the  apostles  effect  by 
incentives  to  love.  For  these  reasons  I  will  not  have  him  in  my 
Bible  in  the  list  of  the  true  canonical  books ;  still  neither  do  I 
gainsay  any  man  to  place  and  value  this  book  as  he  may  list :  for 
otherwise  there  are  in  it  many  good  sentences.  One  man  by  him¬ 
self  is  nobody  in  worldly  matters ;  how,  then,  shall  this  writer, 


Luther. 


397 

who  is  but  one  and  alone,  dare  contradict  Paul  and  all  the  other 
Scriptures  1  ” 1 

1  The  preface  which  we  have  given  is  the  Preface  to  the  particular  Epis¬ 
tles  of  St.  James  and  St.  Jude.  This  is  a  different  and  distinct  preface  from 
the  Preface  to  the  New  Testament  in  general,  which  comes  first  of  all.  In 
this  latter-mentioned  Preface  occurs  the  opprobrious  epithet  of  the  “  epistle 
of  straw,”  by  which  Luther  designated  the  Epistle  of  St.  James,  and  for  which 
Archdeacon  Hare  gives  the  following  apology  :  “  All  sorts  of  persons  com¬ 
plain  that  Luther  called  it  an  Epistle  of  straw  ;  and  perhaps  the  loudest  in 
this  complaint  are  those  to  whom  the  whole  Bible  is  little  else  than  a  book  of 
straw.  The  expression,  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  discover,  occurs  only 
in  a  part  of  the  Preface  to  the  German  New  Testament  published  in  1522, 
printed  by  Walch,  in  vol.  xiv.  p.  105,  and  was  omitted  in  the  editions  sub¬ 
sequent  to  1524.  Luther  in  pointing  out,  for  the  instruction  of  those  who 
wereAnused  to  the  reading  of  the  Bible,  which  books  in  the  New  Testament  are 
of  the  greatest  importance,  says,  as  many  have  said  before  and  since,  that 
the  Gospel  of  St.  John  is  to  be  valued  far  above  the  other  three,  and  con¬ 
cludes  thus  :  ‘St.  John’s  Gospel,  and  his  first  Epistle,  the  Epistles  of  St. 
Paul,  especially  those  to  the  Bomans,  Galatians,  Ephesians,  and  St.  Peter’s 
first  Epistle, — these  are  the  books  which  set  Christ  before  you,  and  teach 
you  everything  necessary  and  salutary  for  you  to  know,  even  though  you 
were  never  to  hear  or  see  any  other  book  or  doctrine.  Therefore  the 
Epistle  of  St.  James  is  quite  an  epistle  of  straw  by  the  side  of  these  ;  for  it 
has  no  true  evangelical  character.’  Now,  doubtless,  if  these  books  were  to 
be  severed  from  the  rest  of  Scripture,  it  would  be  much  as  if  you  were  to  cut 
away  the  roots  and  trunk  of  a  tree,  and  to  fancy  that  the  upper  branches 
would  still  continue  hanging  in  the  air,  putting  forth  leaves,  and  bearing 
fruit.  On  the  other  hand  it  should  be  observed  that  the  expression  applied 
to  the  Epistle  of  St.  James  is  not  used  positively,  but  relatively,  in  com¬ 
parison  with  those  books  of  the  New  Testament  in  which  the  special  doctrines 
of  the  Gospel  are  brought  forward  more  fully  and  explicitly.  It  was 
probably  suggested  by  wfhat  St.  Paul  says  in  1  Cor.  iii.  12  ;  and,  as  I  have 
often  had  occasion  to  remark,  Luther’s  words  are  not  to  be  weighed  in  a 
jeweller’s  scales.  Besides,  we  must  take  into  account  that,  while  he  is  quite 
right  in  denying  the  specially  evangelical  character  of  this  Epistle,  it  had 
been  turned  by  those  who  exaggerated  and  perverted  its  meaning  into  the 
main  prop  of  those  very  errors  concerning  faith  and  justification,  which  it 
was  his  peculiar  mission  to  overthrow.  Even  in  the  quietest  controversy  we 
well  know  how  difficult  it  is  to  measure  all  our  thoughts  and  words,  not  to 
exaggerate  what  favours  our  own  side,  not  to  depreciate  what  supports  our 
adversary.  Who,  then,  will  make  a  man  an  offender  for  a  word,  uttered  in  the 
stress  of  such  a  conflict,  the  most  awful  perhaps  ever  waged  by  man,  inasmuch 
as  it  was  not  only  against  an  external  power  which  kept  the  hearts  and  minds 
of  half  Christendom  in  abject  bondage,  and  answered  an  argument  with  a 
sentence  of  excommunication  and  an  auto  da  fe,  but  also  in  the  first  instance 
against  the  force  of  his  own  inveterate  habits  and  prepossessions,  nay,  of  a 
faith  which  he  had  himself  long  held  earnestly  and  submissively  before  he 
detected  its  fallacy.  Nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that  Luther  omitted  the 
offensive  expression  in  the  later  editions  of  his  New  Testament.” — Hare’s 
Mission  of  the  Comforter,  pp.  814-816. 

Of  this  apology  of  Archdeacon  Hare’s  we  have  nothing  to  say,  except 
that  it  is  perhaps  as  good  a  one  as  could  be  made.  The  truth  is,  no  apology 
can  be  made  for  such  language.  Impetuosity  and  provocation  cannot  justify 


Luther. 


398 

The  specimen  of  Luther’s  scrupulousness  with  respect  to 
Scripture,  and  the  specimen  of  his  unscrupulousness  now  before 
us,  suggest  many  obvious  pieces  of  criticism ;  but  we  shall  only 

the  contemptuous  treatment  of  an  inspired  book  of  Scripture,  nor  should 
Archdeacon  Hare  suppose  that,  by  accounting  for  such  an  act,  he  goes  any 
way  to  excuse  it.  Some  or  other  impulse  or  motive  accounts  for  every  wrong 
act,  but  the  act  is  not  at  all  excused  in  consequence.  We  will  add,  that 
whatever  may  have  become  of  the  offensive  epithet,  “  epistle  of  straw,”  in 
subsequent  editions  (and  if  Luther  left  it  out,  let  the  omission  be  taken  into 
account),  the  Preface  which  we  have  quoted  appears  in  Walch’s  edition  of 
Luther’s  works  (1744),  without  any  sign  whatever  of  abandonment  by  its 
author,  or  any  intimation  of  its  belonging  only  to  a  prior  edition  of  Luther’s 
works,  as  distinct  from  a  later  one.  The  Preface,  therefore,  we  have  given, 
represents  Luther’s  permanent  opinions  with  respect  to  the  Epistle  of  St. 
James. 

Luther  is  generally  defended  from  the  sin  of  his  attacks  on  the  canon  of 
Scripture  on  the  ground  that  he  modified  his  views  afterward.  But  the 
modifications  were  comparatively  slight,  and  never  amounted  to  retractations. 
There  were  four  Epistles  of  which  he  denied  the  inspiration — the  Second 
Epistle  of  St.  Peter,  the  Epistles  of  St.  James  and  St.  Jude,  and  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews,  to  which  must  be  added  the  Book  of  Revelation.  In  the 
case  of  each  of  these,  the  reasons  he  assigns  are  sometimes  very  frivolous, 
and  always  simple  opinions  of  his  own  upon  the  doctrine  and  style  of  the 
Epistle  or  Book  he  rejects.  He  sits  in  criticism  upon  Scripture,  and  if  he 
thinks  an  Epistle  evangelical,  admits  it ;  if  not,  rejects  it.  The  text  chap, 
x.  ver.  26  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews — “  If  we  sin  wilfully  after  that  we 
have  received  the  knowledge  of  the  truth,  there  remainetli  no  more  sacrifice 
for  sins” — offended  him,  and  influenced  him  in  his  rejection  of  the  Epistle. 
He  also  did  not  like  to  think  that  Esau  “  found  no  place  for  repentance,” 
and  that  influenced  him.  The  Revelation,  again,  was  too  full  of  visions  in 
his  opinion,  it  was  “through  and  through  with  figures;”  he  did  not  like 
this,  and  thought  an  apostle  would  not  prophesy  in  such  a  way.  Again,  the 
writer  of  the  Book  of  Revelation  seemed  to  him  to  threaten  too  severely  all 
those  who  “shall  add  unto,”  or  “shall  take  away  from  the  words  of  the 
book,”  “whereas,”  observes  Luther  with  easy  levity,  “nobody  knows  what 
is  in  this  book.”  “Let  each  man,”  he  says,  “judge  of  this  book  according 
to  the  light  that  is  in  him,  and  by  his  own  particular  perceptions.  I  do  not 
desire  to  impose  my  opinion  respecting  it  upon  any  one.  I  say  simply  that 
which  I  think  of  it  myself.  I  look  upon  the  Revelation  of  St.  John  to  be 
neither  apostolic  nor  jjrophetic.”  Again  of  the  same  book  :  “  Many  of  the 
Fathers  of  the  Church  rejected  this  book,  consequently  every  man  is  at 
liberty  to  treat  it  according  to  the  dictates  of  his  own  mind.  For  my  part, 
one  single  reason  has  determined  me  in  the  judgment  I  have  come  to  respect¬ 
ing  it,  which  is,  that  Christ  is  neither  adored  in  it  nor  taught  in  it  such  as 
we  know  Him.”  In  all  these  cases  Walch  is  anxious  to  bring  out  all  he  can 
to  prove  that  Luther  changed  his  mind  afterward,  but  he  does  not  profess  to 
show  more  than  that  his  style  is  here  and  there  subdued.  Luther  never 
altered  the  substance  of  his  view,  or  admitted  any  of  these  regularly  into  the 
canon  again,  though  in  the  case  of  the  Book  of  Revelation,  he  cancelled  the 
whole  of  his  old  preface  and  substituted  a  new  one.  He  continued  to  reject 
all  for  himself,  only  saying  that  he  did  not  wish  to  interfere  with  any  other 
person’s  acceptance  of  them. 


Luther. 


399 


ask  here,  Why  was  he  so  scrupulous  in  one  case,  so  un¬ 
scrupulous  in  another  ?  Luther’s  modes  of  proceeding  seldom 
require  very  nice  criticism  to  explain.  He  was  very  scrupulous 
with  respect  to  Scripture  when  it  interposed  against  another 
man’s  dogma ;  very  unscrupulous  with  respect  to  it  when  it 
interfered  with  his  own.  Justification  without  works  was  his 
own  dogma ;  the  Sacramentarian  view  of  the  Lord’s  Supper 
was  Zwinglius’s.  Luther  had  his  own  great  absorbing  idea  ;  he 
was  prepared  to  push  that  out  at  all  risk,  and  Scripture  text 
and  Scripture  canon  gave  way  before  it.  But  he  cared  mar¬ 
vellously  little  about  other  men’s  new  ideas,  and  thought  it 
rather  an  impertinence  that  they  should  have  them  at  all.  He 
was  then  magisterial,  and  assumed  the  chair  of  the  doctor 
ecdesice.  He  took  the  bold  originator  severely  to  task,  con¬ 
fronted  him  with  the  Scripture  letter,  protested  against  all 
liberties,  was  angry,  scandalised,  and  shocked.  It  is  but  justice 
to  add  that  Luther  had,  independently  of  this  consideration, 
small  sympathies  with  such  a  view  as  Zwinglius’s.  Luther 
hated  formality  in  religion,  but  he  had  no  objection  to  mystery. 
His  whole  view  against  works  was  antagonistic  to  form  and 
rule,  precision  and  positiveness  in  duties.  But  with  mystery 
he  had  sympathies ;  his  love  of  the  supernatural  in  the  region 
of  common  life,  his  ghost  and  fairy  .lore,  the  very  grotesque- 
nesses  into  which  his  supernaturalism  ran,  showed  a  mind 
possessed  of  the  sense  of  mystery.  The  Swiss  development  of 
the  Beformation,  cold,  hard,  dry,  and  materialistic,  repelled  and 
disgusted  him ;  he  denounced  its  distinctive  doctrine  as  a 
gratuitous  and  audacious  innovation,  and  he  proceeded  to  call 
Zwinglius  names  :  “  What  a  fellow  is  this  Zwinglius  !  ignorant 
as  a  block,  of  grammar,  and  logic,  and  every  other  science.” 
“  Zwinglius  I  regard  as  having  drawn  upon  himself  the  just 
hatred  of  all  good  men  by  his  daring  and  criminal  manner  of 
treating  the  word  of  God.”  With  Zwinglius  Bucer  went 
along  :  “  I  know  too  well  the  wickedness  of  Bucer.  .  .  .  Christ 
guard  thee,  poor  Luther,  surrounded  as  thou  art  with  these  wild 
beasts,  these  vipers,  lionesses,  and  panthers,  far  more  in  danger 
than  was  Daniel  in  the  lions’  den.” 

There  was  another  subject  on  which  the  Beformation  began 


400 


Luther . 


to  show  uncomfortable  signs,  and  threaten  dangerous  develop¬ 
ments  ;  we  allude  to  the  subject  of  marriage.  On  this  subject, 
indeed,  Luther  had  himself  established  large  premisses  for 
licence  to  appeal  to. 

Luther  had  a  fundamental  view  with  respect  to  marriage, 
conceived,  as  many  other  of  his  views  were,  in  the  spirit  of  one¬ 
sided  and  impatient  contradiction  to  established  ideas.  That 
the  abuses  of  the  monastic  system  were  great,  and  that  force 
and  tyranny  in  those  ages  drove  numbers  of  both  sexes  into 
monasteries  and  convents,  who  were  not  at  all  fitted  for  the  life, 
and  who  were  deprived  by  such  an  incarceration  of  that  deve¬ 
lopment,  moral  and  intellectual,  of  themselves  which  God  had 
intended  for  them,  nobody  can  fairly  doubt.  The  story  of  the 
nun  in  I  Promessi  Sposi  is  only  a  specimen  of  what  went 
on,  on  a  large  scale.  There  was  a  general  wide-spread  griev¬ 
ance  ;  and  it  was  a  plain  fact  that  the  Divine  institution  of 
marriage  was  unlawfully  interfered  with  by  human  systems. 
To  expose  such  a  grievance,  and  obtain  a  remedy  for  it,  was  in 
itself  a  legitimate  task  for  any  one  to  undertake.  But  Luther 
undertook  it  in  that  extravagant  and  excessive  spirit  in  which 
he  undertook  every  other  work.  He  opposed  a  practical  griev¬ 
ance  in  one  direction  by  an  extreme  theory  in  another,  and  set 
up  a  code  which  was  new  to  the  Christian  world.  He  seems 
to  have  regarded  himself  as  under  a  special  prophetical  com¬ 
mission  to  revive  the  original  matrimonial  charter  given  to  the 
human  race ;  and  he  set  about  his  work  with  the  spirit  with 
which  a  political  revolutionist  goes  back  to  his  theory  of  the 
social  compact.  He  overlooked  the  qualifications,  cautions, 
and  exceptions  with  which  to  us,  under  the  Christian  dispen¬ 
sation,  this  charter  comes  down  accompanied ;  and  that  whole 
department  of  Christian  precept,  which,  however  much  abused, 
was  in  itself  a  Divine  modification,  interpreting  the  original 
law  to  us,  just  as  subsequent  judgments  interpret  original 
statutes  in  civil  courts,  was  entirely  thrown  over  to  make  way 
for  a  naked  reassertion  of  the  original  law  itself.  With  his 
usual  decision  and  point,  Luther  threw  himself  upon  the  origi¬ 
nal  command  in  the  28th  verse  of  the  1st  chapter  of  Genesis  : 
“Crescite  et  multiplicamini In  this  sentence  he  saw  the  whole 


Luther. 


401 


of  the  Divine  law,  advice,  and  recommendation  on  the  subject 
of  marriage  collected.  Here,  he  said,  is  a  universal  command 
or  statute,  under  the  action  of  which  the  whole  human  race 
comes.  It  is  quite  evident,  therefore,  that  everybody  is  in¬ 
tended  to  marry,  and  that  everybody  should  marry.  Nobody 
has  a  right  to  resist  the  law  of  God,  and  oppose  himself  to  the 
original  act  of  creation.  To  this  universal  law,  indeed,  Luther 
did  admit,  nominally,  exceptions ;  he  was  obliged  nominally  to 
allow  the  force  of  the  text  in  the  19th  chapter  of  St.  Matthew; 
but  he  loaded  the  text  with  such  restrictions,  and  compelled 
everybody,  who  stood  upon  it,  to  give  such  demonstrable  reasons 
that  he  was  of  the  particular  class  which  the  text  singled  out, 
that  practically  his  theory  amounted  to  a  universal  and  essen¬ 
tial  obligation.  In  accordance  with  this  new  speculative 
movement,  society  was,  with  respect  to  the  general  rules  and 
regulations  of  marriage,  thrown  back  upon  the  Old  Testament 
code,  as  distinguished  from  the  subsequent  legislation  of  the 
New.  The  temper  of  a  sterner  and  purer  dispensation  dis¬ 
regarded,  the  forbidden  degrees  were  largely  thrown  open. 
Luther  countenanced  even  more  flagrant  violations  of  the 
Christian  code,  and  his  Sermon  de  Matrimonio ,  delivered  at 
Wittenberg  in  the  year  1522,  gives  licenses  from  which 
the  natural  conscience  of  a  heathen  and  a  savage  would  recoil. 
Without  dwelling,  however,  on  these  special  extravagances, 
it  is  sufficient  to  remark,  that  the  whole  of  the  matrimonial 
question  was  stirred  up  from  its  basis  again ;  and  that,  an 
established  system  of  Christian  growth  removed,  the  field 
was  opened  anew  for  the  indefinite  play  of  speculation  and 
practice.  There  was  an  open  area ;  a  new  code  was  invited, 
and  the  original  statute,  “  Grescite  et  multiplicamini”  was  the 
axiom  appealed  to. 

That  such  a  theoretical  movement  on  the  subject  of  mar¬ 
riage  should  produce  some  awkward  practical  fruits  was  not 
surprising.  So  fierce  and  naked  an  appeal  to  original  rights 
was  likely  to  set  men  speculating  very  freely  and  largely  as  to 
what  their  rights  were.  It  was  not  surprising  if,  amid  the 
clearance  of  established  ideas,  a  certain  Elector  Philip  of  Hesse 
began  to  imagine  that  there  would  be  no  great  harm  in  having 

M.E.-I.]  2  c 


402 


Litt  her. 


two  wives.  The  appeal  had  been  made  to  the  old  dispensation, 
and  under  the  old  dispensation  a  plurality  of  wives  was  allowed. 
Philip  described  his  case  as  a  very  strong  one,  and  supplicated 
earnestly. 

How  it  is  obvious  that  as  soon  as  a  demand  like  this  was, 
in  an  actual  individual  case,  urged  upon  Luther,  he  had  no 
solid  ground  on  which  to  oppose  it.  Luther  could  not,  upon 
his  principles,  say  at  once  that  it  was  wrong  for  a  Christian 
to  marry  a  second  wife,  nor  did  he  ever.  He  was  asked 
the  question  more  than  once,  and  always  pointedly  refused 
to  say  that  such  an  act  was  absolutely  wrong.  Thus  he 
writes  to  an  inquirer  :  a  To  your  first  question,  whether  a  man 
may  have  more  than  one  woman  to  wife,  my  answer  is  this  : 
Unbelievers  may  do  what  they  please ;  but  Christian  freedom 
is  to  be  regulated  according  to  love,  so  that  everything  should 
be  determined  with  a  view  to  our  neighbour’s  good,  where  no 
necessity  or  sin  against  faith  or  conscience  prevents  us.  How 
however  every  one  seeks  that  freedom,  which  will  serve  and 
profit  himself,  without  regard  to  his  neighbour’s  benefit  or 
edification ;  although  St.  Paul  says,  ‘  All  things  are  lawful  to 
me,  but  all  things  are  not  expedient :  only  use  not  your 
liberty  for  an  occasion  to  the  flesh.’  Again,  though  the  ancients 
had  many  wives,  Christians  are  not  to  act  after  such  an  ex¬ 
ample,  because  there  is  no  necessity,  nor  edification,  nor  special 
word  of  God  commanding  this ;  and  such  great  scandal  and 
trouble  might  come  from  it.  Therefore  do  not  esteem  the 
Christian  as  more  free,  unless  there  be  some  command  of  God 
with  regard  to  such  freedom.”  In  this  answer  he  discourages 
the  liberty  of  taking  more  than  one  wife,  as  fraught  with 
scandal,  and  not  serving  to  edification ;  he  advises  persons  to 
do  with  one  wife,  but  he  cannot  absolutely  command  them. 
As  the  Elector  said:  “ Lutherus  scribit,  se  bigamiam  non  sua- 
dere .”  He  dissuades  as  a  counsellor  and  friend,  he  cannot  and 
wishes  not  to  do  more.  On  the  demand  of  the  Landgrave  then 
reaching  them,  this  was  the  line  which  Luther’s  and  Melanch- 
thon’s  answer  adopted.  They  dissuaded  him  from  the  contem¬ 
plated  step,  and  told  him  of  the  scandal  which  would  arise 
from  it  if  known ;  but  admitted  at  the  same  time  that  if  he 


L  nt  her. 


403 


insisted  upon  it,  they  could  not  forbid  it.  The  letter,  which 
bears  the  names  of  Luther,  Melanchthon,  Bucer,  Melander, 
Corvinus,  Adam,  Leningus,  Winteferte,  from  beginning  to  end 
alternates  from  one  to  the  other  of  these  two  points,  and  finally 
grants  the  permission  required.1 

1  “With  regard  to  the  question  of  which  Master  Bucer  spoke  with  us, 
firstly,  this  is  our  opinion.  Your  Grace  knows  and  understands  this  yourself 
that  it  is  a  very  different  thing  to  make  a  general  law,  and  in  a  particular 
case  to  use  a  dispensation,  out  of  weighty  reasons,  and  yet  according  to 
Divine  permission  ;  for  against  God  no  dispensation  has  force.  Now  we  can¬ 
not  advise  that  it  be  openly  introduced,  and  thus  made  a  law,  that  each  he 
allowed  to  have  more  than  one  wife.  But  should  anything  of  this  get  into 
print,  your  Grace  may  conceive  that  this  would  be  understood  and  adopted 
as  a  general  law,  whence  much  scandal  and  trouble  would  ensue.  Therefore 
this  is  by  no  means  to  be  adopted  ;  and  we  pray  your  Grace  to  consider  how 
grievous  it  would  be,  if  it  were  charged  upon  any  one  that  he  had  introduced 
this  law  in  the  German  nation,  whence  endless  trouble  in  all  marriages  might 
be  feared.  As  to  what  may  be  said  against  this,  that  what  is  right  before 
God  should  be  altogether  allowed,  this  is  true  in  a  measure.  If  God  has 
commanded  it,  or  it  is  a  necessary  thing,  it  is  true  ;  but  if  it  is  not  com¬ 
manded  nor  necessary,  other  circumstances  should  be  taken  into  account. 
Thus  with  regard  to  this  question  :  God  instituted  marriage  so  that  it  was 
to  be  the  union  of  two  persons  alone,  and  not  of  more.  .  .  . 

“  In  certain  cases,  however,  a  dispensation  may  be  used, — as  if  a  person 
taken  captive  in  a  foreign  land  should  marry  there,  and  on  gaining  his 
freedom  should  bring  his  wife  with  him, — or  if  long-continued  sickness 
should  supply  a  cause,  as  has  been  held  at  times  with  regard  to  lepers, — if 
in  such  cases  a  man  takes  another  wife  with  the  counsel  of  his  pastor,  not 
to  introduce  a  law,  but  as  a  matter  of  necessity,  such  a  man  we  could  not 
condemn.  Since  then  it  is  one  thing  to  introduce  a  law  and  another  to  use 
a  dispensation,  we  humbly  entreat  your  Grace  to  consider,  first,  that  care 
should  in  every  way  be  taken  that  this  matter  be  not  brought  publicly  before 
the  world  as  a  law  which  everybody  may  follow.  Next,  since  it  is  to  be  no 
law,  but  merely  a  dispensation,  let  your  Grace  also  consider  the  scandal, 
namely,  that  the  enemies  of  the  gospel  would  cry  out  that  we  are  like  the 
Anabaptists,  who  take  several  wives  at  once,  and  that  the  Evangelicals  seek 
the  liberty  of  taking  as  many  wives  as  they  please,  according  to  the  practice 
in  Turkey.  Again,  what  princes  do  gets  abroad  much  farther  than  what  is 
done  by  private  persons.  Again,  if  private  persons  hear  of  such  an  example 
in  their  lords,  they  desire  that  the  like  should  be  allowed  to  them  ;  as  we 
see  how  easily  a  practice  spreads.  .  .  . 

“Therefore  let  your  Grace,  in  consideration  of  all  these  causes,  the 
offence,  the  other  cares  and  labours,  and  the  weakness  of  body,  weigh  this 
matter  well.  Be  also  pleased  to  consider  that  God  has  given  your  Grace  fair 
young  princes  and  princesses  with  this  consort,  and  be  content  with  her,  as 
many  others  must  have  patience  under  their  marriage,  to  avoid  offence.  For 
that  we  should  excite  or  urge  your  Grace  to  an  offensive  innovation  is  far 
from  our  mind.  For  your  country  and  others  might  reproach  us  on  account 
thereof,  which  would  be  intolerable  to  us,  because  we  are  commanded  in 
God’s  word  to  regulate  marriage  and  all  human  matters  according  to  their 
first  divine  institution,  and,  so  far  as  possible,  to  keep  them  therein,  and  to 


404 


Luther. 


Now  this  act  of  Luther’s  does  not  appear  one  which  we  need 
hesitate  to  judge.  It  is  the  act  of  deliberately  permitting  a 
Christian  to  have  two  wives,  and  thus  deliberately  violating 
the  Christian  code  with  respect  to  marriage.  Marriage  is  by 
original  institution  monogamy ;  departure  from  that  institution 
was  allowed  afterward,  in  condescension  to  man’s  weakness 
and  hardness  of  heart ;  but  Christianity  reverted  to  it,  and  en¬ 
forced  it  as  an  inviolable  law;1  and  of  this  law  Luther  delibe¬ 
rately  sanctioned  the  transgression.  Nevertheless,  as  Arch¬ 
deacon  Hare  has  attempted  an  apology  for  this  act  of  Luther’s, 
it  is  due  to  him  to  see  what  he  has  to  say.  Archdeacon  Hare 
then  sums  up  his  apology  thus  :  “  Such  is  the  amount  of 
Luther’s  sin,  or  rather  error, — for  sin  I  dare  not  call  it, — in 
this  affair,  in  which  the  voice  of  the  world,  ever  ready  to 
believe  evil  of  great  and  good  men,  has  so  severely  condemned 
him,  without  investigation  of  the  facts,  although  the  motives 
imputed  to  him  are  wholly  repugnant  to  those  which  governed 
his  conduct  through  life.  He  did  not  compromise  any  professed 
principles,  as  the  reviewer  accuses  him  of  doing ;  he  did  not 

avert  whatever  may  offend  any  one.  Such,  too,  is  now  the  way  of  the  world, 
that  people  like  to  throw  all  the  blame  upon  the  preachers,  if  anything  un¬ 
pleasant  falls  out  ;  and  men’s  hearts,  among  high  and  low,  are  unsteady  ;  and 
all  sorts  of  things  are  to  be  feared.  But  if  your  Grace  do  not  quit  your 
unchaste  life,  for  that  you  write  that  this  is  not  possible,  we  would  rather 
that  your  Grace  stood  in  better  case  before  God,  and  lived  with  a  good  con¬ 
science,  for  your  Grace’s  happiness  and  the  good  of  your  country  and  people. 
If,  however,  your  Grace  should  at  length  resolve  to  take  another  wife,  we 
think  that  this  should  be  kept  secret,  as  was  said  above  of  the  dispensation  ; 
namely,  that  your  Grace  and  the  lady,  with  some  confidential  persons,  should 
know  your  Grace’s  mind  and  conscience  through  confession.  From  this  no 
particular  rumour  or  scandal  would  arise  ;  for  it  is  not  unusual  for  princes 
to  have  concubines  ;  and  although  all  the  people  would  not  know  what  the 
circumstances  were,  the  intelligent  would  be  able  to  guess  them,  and  would 
be  better  pleased  with  such  a  quiet  way  of  life,  than  with  adultery  and 
other  wild  and  licentious  courses.  Nor  are  we  to  heed  everything  that  people 
say,  provided  our  consciences  stand  right.  Thus  far,  and  this  we  deem 
right.  For  that  which  is  permitted  concerning  marriage  in  the  law  of  Moses 
is  not  forbidden  in  the  Gospel.” — Hare’s  Mission  of  the  Comforter,  pp.  831- 
834. 

1  However  the  question  of  casuistry,  with  respect  to  the  two  wives  of  a 
heathen,  brought  with  him  at  his  conversion  into  the  Christian  Church,  may 
be  disposed  of,  the  decision  will  not  at  all  affect  the  inviolability  of  the  law 
of  monogamy  with  respect  to  Christians.  The  act  of  bigamy,  there,  is  a 
heathen  act,  and,  therefore,  however  ex  post  facto  dealt  with,  no  precedent 
whatever  for  the  act  in  a  Christian. 


Luther. 


405 


inculcate  polygamy,  as  the  pamphleteer  charges  him  with 
doing.  .  But  inasmuch  as  he  could  not  discover  any  direct, 
absolute  prohibition  of  polygamy  in  the  New  Testament,  while 
it  was  practised  by  the  patriarchs,  and  recognised  in  the  law, 
he  did  not  deem  himself  warranted  in  condemning  it  absolutely, 
when  there  appeared  in  special  cases  to  be  a  strong  necessity, 
either  with  a  view  to  some  great  national  object,  or  for  the 
relief  of  a  troubled  conscience.  Here  it  behoves  us  to  bear  in 
mind,  on  the  one  hand,  what  importance  Luther  attached,  as  all 
his  writings  witness,  to  this  high  ministerial  office  of  relieving 
troubled  consciences ;  and  it  may  mitigate  our  condemnation  of 
his  error, — which  after  all  was  an  error  on  the  right  side,  its 
purpose  being  to  substitute  a  hallowed  union  for  unhallowed 
license/’ — Pp.  857,  858. 

Now  this  defence  holds  good  against  one  particular  inference 
which  has  been  drawn  from  Luther’s  act.  Sir  William  Hamil¬ 
ton  appears  to  us  hard  upon  Luther  in  charging  him  with  a 
wish  to  promulgate  polygamy  ;  and  in  regarding  this  act  as  only 
the  sanction,  in  a  particular  instance,  of  a  practice  which  he 
desired  at  heart  to  establish  generally.  The  whole  language  of 
the  answer  to  the  Landgrave  shows  that  the  liberty  allowed 
him  was  only  allowed  as  a  dispensation,  and  that  the  permit¬ 
ting  authority  was  reluctant  even  to  grant  that ;  it  indicated 
men  feeling  themselves  under  a  difficulty ;  afraid  of  their  own 
reputation  if  they  gave  leave,  afraid  of  the  Landgrave  if  they 
refused  it;  unable  to  reject  polygamy  as  wrong  in  principle, 
and  yet  shrinking  from  it  when  threatened  with  the  fact.  But 
whatever  becomes  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton’s  view,  the  act  still 
remains  to  be  excused — the  act  of  allowing  a  particular  person 
to  have  two  wives.  And  what  does  the  apologist  say  here  ?  The 
substance  of  his  apology  is  little  more  than  a  statement  of  the 
offence ;  Luther,  he  says,  could  not  prohibit  polygamy  in  an 
individual  instance,  because  he  did  not  think  the  Gospel  abso¬ 
lutely  prohibited  polygamy.  But  the  fact  that  Luther  did  not 
think  so  is  Luther’s  offence.  Nobody  could  blame  him  for 
acting  upon  a  view,  if  he  had  a  true  view ;  the  charge  is  against 
his  view  to  begin  with ;  the  view  he  held  that  polygamy  was 
consistent  with  Christianity.  The  subordinate  defences,  sug- 


406 


Luther. 


gested  to  take  off  from  the  edge  of  the  offence,  and  “  mitigate 
our  condemnation,”  are  hardly  more  fortunate.  “  Luther,”  the 
apologist  tells  us,  “  attached  great  importance  to  the  high 
ministerial  office  of  relieving  troubled  consciences,”  and  in  this 
particular  case  acted  on  that  motive.  Now  it  is  difficult  to  see 
how  the  conscience  of  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse  can,  except  by 
a  very  lax  use  of  the  term,  he  put  under  the  class  of  what  are 
called  “  troubled  consciences.”  The  Landgrave  said,  “  If  you 
do  not  allow  me  to  have  another  wife,  I  shall  only  take  the 
same  liberty  under  another  shape,  and  therefore  you  may  as 
well  allow  me.”  The  matter  of  trouble  to  the  Landgrave’s  con¬ 
science  was  not  a  past  sin  of  which  he  wanted  to  repent,  but  a 
future  sin  which  he  intended  to  commit,  if  he  had  not  a  par¬ 
ticular  license  given  him.  If  to  give  such  license  for  such  a 
cause  be  called  “  giving  relief  to  a  troubled  conscience,”  we  see 
no  reason  why  a  license  to  break  the  whole  of  the  ten  com¬ 
mandments  may  not  be  given  to  persons  upon  their  certifying 
beforehand  that  they  intend  to  break  them  whether  they  have 
the  license  or  no ;  and  why  such  general  license  should  be  re¬ 
fused  the  title  of  a  general  relief  to  troubled  consciences.  The 
validity  of  such  an  excuse  entirely  depends  on  the  previous 
question,  whether  an  act  of  polygamy  is  absolutely  wrong  or 
no  in  a  Christian  ?  If  not  in  itself  wrong,  however  inexpedient 
the  general  adoption  might  be,  it  is  subject-matter  of  dispensa¬ 
tion,  and  a  considerate  spiritual  guide  may  allow  it  in  a  par¬ 
ticular  case,  in  order  to  preserve  a  person  from  committing  what 
is  wrong.  But  if  an  act  of  polygamy  is  absolutely  wrong  in  a 
Christian,  to  allow  it  in  order  to  save  him  from  doing  what  is 
wrong,  is  as  bad  reasoning  as  it  is  loose  morality.  A  man  who 
cannot  submit  to  the  law  of  monogamy  may  or  may  not  be  a 
tolerable  heathen,  but  he  is  not  a  Christian,  and  has  no  right  to 
belong  to  the  Church  of  Christ  upon  earth.  And  to  accommo¬ 
date  Christian  law  to  him,  in  order  that  it  may  be  said  that  he 
does  not  break  Christian  law,  is  to  injure  Christianity,  and  to 
do  him  no  good.  Indeed,  the  reason  why  the  permission  was 
given,  which  in  Archdeacon  Llare’s  opinion  so  mitigates  the 
offence  of  giving  it,  appears  to  us  strongly  to  aggravate  it. 
Bor  what  was  the  ground  of  the  permission?  Was  it  one  of 


L  zither. 


407 


tliose  eccentric  and  unlooked-for  reasons  which  occur  once  or 
twice  in  the  world  in  the  course  of  a  century  ?  No ;  the 
Landgrave  urged  no  reason  hut  what  a  thousand  men  in  every 
city  of  Christendom  might  urge  the  next  day.  His  one  and 
sole  reason  was  that  his  present  wife  was  a  disagreeable  person, 
and  that  he  wanted  another;  he  gave  no  grounds  but  that 
of  simple  desire  on  his  part  that  the  indulgence  should  be 
allowed.  Differing  from  Sir  William  Hamilton,  in  the  view 
that  Luther  wished  to  promote  general  polygamy,  we  must  yet 
say  that  the  fact  of  the  permission  of  a  particular  case  of  it,  on 
such  a  ground  as  this,  was  a  precedent  for  the  widest  spread  of 
it ;  for  what  was  there  to  stop  the  operation  of  a  precedent 
which  admitted  simple  strong  desire  as  a  sufficient  reason  ? 
Whatever  Luther  wished,  his  act  was  a  generally  unsettling 
one,  and  capable  of  bearing  the  largest  and  most  systematic 
results  in  the  way  of  innovation. 

Nor  can  we  admit,  again,  a  comparison,  which  the  apologist 
institutes  between  the  conduct  of  a  divine  who  sanctions  an 
act  of  polygamy,  and  that  of  one  who  connives  at  licentious¬ 
ness  ;  a  comparison  which  he  decides  in  favour  of  the  former. 
However  much  to  blame  Luther  was, — says  Archdeacon  Hare, 
— he  was  not  so  much  to  blame  as  Bossuet ;  for  Bossuet  con¬ 
nived  at  much  greater  immorality  in  Louis  xiv.  than  Luther 
sanctioned  in  Philip  of  Hesse.  But  there  is  a  fallacy  in  this 
reasoning;  for  were  it  granted  that  Louis  xiv.’s  immorality 
was  worse  than  that  of  Philip  of  Hesse,  and  that  Bossuet  con¬ 
nived  at  it,  the  act  of  sanctioning  is  a  different  genus  of  offence 
altogether  from  the  act  of  connivance  ;  and  to  sanction  a  less 
crime  is  much  worse  than  to  connive  at  a  greater.  If  a  person 
commits  a  wrong  act,  and  another  does  not  rebuke  him  for  it, 
the  latter  is  guilty  of  not  asserting  the  truth  ;  but  if  he  sanctions 
the  same,  or  a  much  smaller  offence  in  him,  he  asserts  an  un¬ 
truth,  and  calls  that  right  which  is  not  right.  If  Bossuet  con¬ 
nived,  he  acted  wrong,  but  he  only  committed  himself ;  Luther, 
in  sanctioning,  committed  Christianity.  Still  less  do  we  see 
any  mitigation  of  Luther’s  act,  in  the  confidence,  spirit,  and 
self-possession  with  which  he  took  the  disclosure  of  it,  when 
that  was  made  : — 


408 


Luther. 


44  However  severely,”  says  Archdeacon  Hare,  “  we  may  blame 
Luther  for  these  errors  of  judgment,  for  his  allowing  himself  to  be 
influenced  in  such  a  matter  by  misericordia  and  kumanissima  facilitas , 
still  when  the  secret  is  disclosed,  when  the  scandal  gets  wind,  how 
does  the  heroic  grandeur  of  his  character,  the  might  of  his  invin¬ 
cible  faith,  rise  out  of  the  trial !  The  rain  descended,  and  the  floods 
came,  and  the  winds  blew,  and  beat  upon  his  house :  but  it  stood 
fast,  because  it  was  founded  upon  a  Rock.” 

•  •  •  •  •  •  • 

“  In  a  beautiful  letter,  written  in  the  following  month  of  June 
1540,  to  Melanchthon,  who  was  grievously  oppressed  by  the  scandal 
occasioned  when  the  Landgrave,  in  opposition  to  their  counsel,  let 
his  second  marriage  be  known,  Luther  thus  reminds  him  of  the 
principles  which  had  guided  them  in  their  opinion.  [We  omit  the 
quotation.]  In  this  time  of  trouble  Luther’s  heroic  faith  shines 
forth  still  more  brightly  from  its  contrast  with  Melanchthon’s  weak¬ 
ness.  The  latter  was  quite  crushed,  and  brought  to  the  very  verge 
of  death.  Luther,  on  the  other  hand,  feels  strong  as  ever  from  his 
unshaken  trust  in  his  Heavenly  Supporter.  4  Quare  frustra  nos 
occidimus  ’  (he  says  in  the  letter  just  quoted,  to  Melanchthon),  4  aut 
tristitia  impedimus  cognitionem  victoris  illius  omnium  mortium  et 
tristitiarum  1  Qui  enim  vicit  Diabolum,  et  judicavit  principem 
liujus  mundi,  nonne  et  cum  eo  judicavit  et  vicit  hoc  scandalum  1 
Nam  si  etiam  hoc  prsesens  scandalum  desinat,  dabit  deinde  alias,  et 
forte  majores  turbas  scandalorum,  quas,  si  vivimus,  in  eodem  tamen 
victore  vincemus,  et  ridebimus  quoque.  Nihil  est  malorum  vel 
inferni  de  quo  ille  non  dixerit  et  voluerit  sese  intelligi,  Ego  vici 
mundum,  confidite. — Yaleat  Satan;  propter  ipsum  nec  mcereamus, 
nec  tristemur  :  in  Christo  autem  Domino  lsetemur  et  exultemus  : 
ipse  deducet  in  nihilum  omnes  inimicos  nostros.  Nondum  sumus 
in  Davidis  exemplo,  cujus  causa  longe  desperatior  fuit,  nec  tamen 
cecidit  :  nec  ista  causa  cadet.  Cur  ergo  te  maceras,  cum  finalis 
causa  stet  certe,  id  est,  victoria  Christi,  etsi  formalis  et  media 
nonnihil  deformetur  isto  scandalo? — Nos,  qui  te  sincere  amamus, 
diligenter  et  efficaciter  orabimus.  Yale  in  Christo,  et  noli  timere 
nec  sohcitari.  Omnem  solicitudinem  in  eum  projicias,  qui  vult 
esse  pro  nobis  solicitus,  idque  credi  jussit  et  exigit. — Stabit  illud  : 
Ego  vici  mundum  :  et  vos  vivetis  quia  Ego  vivo.  Iterum  vale,  et  sis 
lsetus  et  quietus,  oro,  sicut  petimus,  imo  sicut  prsecipit  Dominus.’ 
This  is  the  man  whom  the  reviewer  audaciously  charges  with  a 
4  skulking  compromise  of  all  professed  principle,’  and  wTith  violat¬ 
ing  the  Gospel,  4  trembling  only  at  discovery.’ 

44  The  reluctance  to  have  the  matter  known,  it  is  plain,  was  un¬ 
mixed  with  any  personal  consideration  in  Luther ;  though  it  was 


L  tether. 


409 


otherwise  with  Melanchthon,  whose  utter  abashment  on  this  occasion 
shows  how  thoroughly  Luther  understood  his  character,  when  he 
said  to  him  years  before,  Pecca  fortiter.  It  was  just  after  this  last 
letter  of  Luther’s,  that  Melanchthon,  as  he  tells  Camerarius  in  the 
words  just  cited,  was  at  the  very  point  of  death,  and  was  restored 
to  life  in  an  almost  miraculous  manner,  as  it  seemed,  by  the  in¬ 
tensely  fervent  prayers,  and  the  energetic  friendly  comfort  and 
friendly  rebukes  of  Luther.  When  Luther,  who  had  been  sent  for 
on  account  of  Melanchthon’s  dangerous  illness,  arrived,  he  found, 
the  historian  tells  us,  ‘  that  his  eyes  were  sunk,  his  senses  gone, 
his  speech  stopped,  his  hearing  closed,  his  face  fallen  in  and  hollow, 
and,  as  Luther  said,  facies  erat  Hippocratica.  He  knew  nobody, 
ate  and  drank  nothing.  When  Luther  saw  him  thus  disfigured, 
he  was  frightened  above  measure,  and  said  to  his  companions, 
“  God  forfend  I  how  has  the  devil  defaced  this  Organon  !  ” 
He  then  turned  forthwith  to  the  window,  and  prayed  fervently  to 
God.  “  Then,”  said  Luther,  “  our  Lord  God  could  not  but  hear 
me ;  for  I  threw  my  sack  before  his  door,  and  wearied  his  ears 
with  all  his  promises  of  hearing  prayers,  which  I  could  repeat  out 
of  Holy  Writ;  so  that  He  could  not  but  hear  me  if  I  were  ever  to 
trust  in  his  promises.”  Hereupon  he  grasped  Philip  by  the  hand  : 
“  Bono  animo  esto,  Philippe ;  non  morieris.  Although  God  has 
reason  to  slay,  yet  He  willeth  not  the  death  of  a  sinner,  but  that 
he  should  be  converted  and  live.  He  has  pleasure  in  life,  not  in 
death.  If  God  called  and  received  the  very  greatest  sinners  that 
ever  were  upon  earth,  Adam  and  Eve,  again  into  favour,  much  less 
will  He  reject  thee,  my  Philip,  or  let  thee  perish  in  sin  and  despair. 
Therefore  give  no  place  to  the  spirit  of  sorrow,  and  be  not  thine 
own  murderer ;  but  trust  in  the  Lord,  who  can  slay  and  make  alive 
again.”  For  Luther  well  knew  the  burthen  of  his  heart  and  con¬ 
science.  Being  thus  taken  hold  of  and  addressed,  Philip  began  to 
draw  breath  again,  but  could  not  say  anything  for  a  good  while. 
Then  he  turned  his  face  straight  upon  Luther,  and  began  to  beg 
him  for  God’s  sake  not  to  detain  him  any  longer ;  that  he  was  now 
on  a  good  journey ;  that  he  should  let  him  go  ;  that  nothing  better 
could  befall  him.  “  By  no  means,  Philip,”  said  Luther;  “thou 
must  serve  our  Lord  God  yet  longer.”  Thus  Philip  by  degrees 
became  more  cheerful,  and  let  Luther  order  him  something  to  eat ; 
and  Luther  brought  it  himself  to  him,  but  Philip  refused  it.  Then 
Luther  forced  him  with  these  threats,  saying  :  “  Hark,  Philip,  thou 
must  eat,  or  I  excommunicate  thee.”  With  these  words  he  was 
overpowered,  so  that  he  ate  a  very  little ;  and  thus  by  degrees  he 
gained  strength  again.’  See  the  account  cited  by  Bretschneider 
in  his  edition  of  Melanchthon,  iv.  p.  xvii.  I  enter  into  these 


4io 


Luther. 


details  of  Luther’s  conduct  connected  with  this  affair,  because  it 
has  often  been  represented  as  utterly  disgraceful  and  destructive 
of  his  moral  character  ;  whereas  on  this,  as  on  every  other  occasion, 
the  best  vindication  of  him  is  the  truth.  The  more  one  knows  of 
him,  the  grander  he  becomes,  the  more,  too,  he  wins  not  merely 
reverence,  but  love.” 

The  power  of  mind  which  this  passage  discloses  in  Luther 
is,  we  admit,  very  great,  and  it  stands  out,  unquestionably,  in 
strong  relief,  by  the  side  of  the  feebleness  of  Melanchthon. 
But  it  is  a  question  'whether,  under  such  circumstances,  Melanch- 
thon’s  feebleness  is  not  a  more  creditable  state  of  mind  than 
Luther’s  power.  The  power  which  Luther  shows  is  the  power 
of  putting  a  good  face  upon  a  bad  business,  and  braving  out 
an  awkward  step  once  taken.  He  says  to  himself,  It  cannot 
be  helped  now,  we  must  make  the  best  of  it ;  and  he  does  make 
the  best  of  it,  and  carries  off  the  act  with  a  swing.  Such  a 
power  shows  a  strong,  forcible  character ;  but  before  it  is  put 
forward  as  a  defence  of  that  act  which  elicited  it,  it  ought  to 
be  carefully  distinguished  from  that  quality  which,  in  common 
parlance,  bears  an  unfavourable  name.  Luther  was  a  great 
man  ;  but  the  assurance  of  a  great  man  must  no  more  be 
admitted  to  atone  for  a  wrong  act  than  that  of  a  little  man. 

In  judging  of  this  act  of  Luther’s,  it  is  indeed  difficult  to  dis¬ 
tinguish  how  much  of  it  belonged  to  speculative  audacity,  and 
how  much  to  moral  laxity.  The  subject  of  marriage,  so  far  as 
it  suggested  questions  for  the  intellect  to  decide  upon,  was  an 
intellectual  subject ;  and  Luther  approached  it  in  that  inde¬ 
pendent  and  audacious  spirit  in  which  he  approached  other 
matters  of  doctrine.  He  had  a  pleasure  in  invading  an  occu¬ 
pied  ground,  in  theorising  where  all  had  been  considered 
settled  ;  in  clearing  away  old  ideas,  and  laying  down  new  ones. 
So  far  his  impulse  was  a  speculative  one,  and  part  of  the 
charge  of  moral  laxity  is  drained  off  into  that  of  intellectual 
presumption.  But  with  the  speculative  impulse  there  mingles, 
too  evidently,  moral  laxity  also.  The  general  tone  of  Luther 
with  respect  to  the  particular  department  of  morality  here 
alluded  to,  where  not  positively  offensive,  is  free  and  easy,  and 
unbecoming  the  severity  of  a  Christian.  The  excuses  of  a 


Luther . 


4i  1 

temper  rudely  frank,  of  a  ready  tongue  always  saying  what 
came  uppermost,  and  of  an  argumentati yq furor  always  pushing 
him  to  coarseness  as  a  form  of  strength,  might  be  excuses  for 
defective  strictness  and  delicacy  on  such  a  subject,  were  the 
defects  those  of  language  only  :  but  the  defects  in  Luther’s  case 
are  more  than  these.  It  is  not  that  he  uses  that  coarseness  of 
language  wdiich  might  be  attributed  to  the  age  rather  than  to 
the  individual ;  but  he  discloses  mental  levity  and  mental 
laxity  on  this  subject.  He  plainly  wTants  those  severe  ideas  in 
relation  to  it  which  as  a  Christian  he  ought  to  have.  With 
such  an  unfavourable  context  in  Luther’s  general  language  to 
fall  back  upon,  on  the  subject  of  the  act  now  before  us,  we 
cannot  but  express  our  deep  and  sincere  regret  that  Archdeacon 
Hare  should  have  undertaken  the  defence  of  such  an  act.  He 
has  conceived  an  unbounded  admiration  for  Luther,  and,  having 
conceived  it,  his  generosity  impels  him  to  defend  Luther  at  all 
hazards.  But  in  such  a  case  the  maxim  of  being  just  before 
you  are  generous  is  well  worthy  of  attention  ;  and  an  apologist, 
however  enthusiastic,  should  never  defend  his  author  beyond 
the  point  where  the  defence  does  justice  to  himself. 

Some  social  and  some  doctrinal  consequences  of  Luther’s 
movement  have  now  been  exhibited ;  and  we  see  the  great 
author  of  the  Reformation  struggling  at  every  step  with  dis¬ 
agreeable  and  ominous  developments  of  his  own  act :  coercing, 
recalling,  denouncing,  protesting ;  assailed  and  assailing ; 
lamenting  and  persecuting ;  harassed  with  awkward  questions  ; 
obliged  to  go  further  than  he  wanted  to  go  ;  and  put  in  the 
position  of  a  spectator  of  his  own  movement,  anxiously  and 
nervously  watching  results  which  were  now,  in  a  great  degree, 
out  of  his  hands.  As  events  drove  him  more  and  more  into 
this  position,  and  he  had  more  and  more  the  pain  of  seeing 
consequences  which  he  did  not  like,  and  yet  could  not  help, 
taking  place  :  as  lie  had  more  and  more  to  bear  disgusts  and 
feel  weakness,  he  fell  back  considerably  upon  that  melancholy 
in  which  he  had  commenced  his  career.  Never  for  an  instant 
flinching  from  the  antagonistic  or  dogmatic  side  of  his  position, 
hurling  mortal  defiances  on  Rome  to  the  last,  and  full  of  his 
own  great  fundamental  doctrine, — he  yet  could  not  shake  off 


412 


Luther . 


the  inward  sadness  and  vexation,  whiclr  the  ever  rising  facts 
of  a  general  religious  unsettlement,  appealing  to  his  eyes  and 
ears,  caused.  And  the  melancholy  of  his  character,  so  power¬ 
ful  as  a  stimulus  at  the  commencement  of  his  career,  was 
prolific  of  disgusts  toward  the  close. 

Luther’s  melancholy  is  a  feature  in  him,  which  there  happens 
to  be  an  especial  call  to  notice,  on  account  of  some  extraordin¬ 
ary  and  eccentric  shapes  which  it  at  times  assumed,  and  its 
connection  with  those  grotesque  scenes  of  supernaturalism 
which  figure  so  prominently  in  some  parts  of  his  life.  Luther 
had  then  what  is  called  a  natural  and  constitutional  melancholy. 
There  is  a  kind  of  melancholy,  which  we  call  natural  and 
constitutional,  which  acts  upon  no  discernible  cause  but  simply 
because  it  exists,  and  is  an  original  disposition  of  the  mind,  in 
connection  with  the  bodily  constitution.  Again,  there  is  a 
rational  melancholy,  which  refers  itself  consciously  to  causes — 
more  especially  that  great  fundamental  one,  the  existence  of 
evil  in  the  world  :  which  is  ever  before  it  in  the  shape  of  one 
or  other  of  its  particular  results,  one  or  other  painful,  disgusting, 
or  humiliating  event.  Both  of  these  kinds  of  melancholy 
enter  into  the  composition  of  what  is  called  a  melancholy  tem¬ 
perament  ;  and  both  of  them  are  in  principle  suitable  and 
becoming  to  such  a  creature  as  man,  in  such  a  world  as  the 
present  one.  Those  partial  obscurations  of  nature,  and  ebbings 
of  the  animal  spirits,  which  constitute  natural  melancholy,  so 
far  from  being  in  themselves  mere  awkwardnesses  and  inappro¬ 
priate  interruptions,  fall  in  harmoniously  with  a  perishable  state  : 
they  are  natural  anticipations  of  the  final  withdrawal  of  that 
gift  of  life  which  awaits  all  creatures  here — fit  tremblings  of 
that  which  is  one  day  to  fall,  and  vanishings  of  that  which  is 
one  day  to  expire.  Thus  the  Psalmist  pictures  even  the  in¬ 
ferior  creatures  as  sometimes  feeling  a  cloud  over  their  spirits, 
and  suffering  obscurations  of  their  animal  life — foreshadowing 
its  final  departure  :  “  When  thou  hidest  thy  face  they  are  troubled : 
when  Thou  takest  away  their  breath  they  die,  and  are  turned 
again  to  their  dust  :  ”  and  the  picture  elevates  and  dignifies 
rather  than  lowers  the  inferior  creatures  in  our  eyes.  That 
melancholy,  also,  which  is  the  offspring  of  thought  and  percep- 


L  lit  her. 


4i3 

tion,  is  becoming  in  its  place  ;  and  the  total  want  of  it  argnes 
an  insensibility  to  certain  obvious  facts  connected  with  this 
visible  system.  Luther’s  melancholy,  then,  is  not  in  itself  an 
unpleasing  feature  ;  it  rather  appeals  to  our  sympathies.  We 
see  him,  in  spite  of  his  uproarious  hilarity,  and  overflowing  and 
successful  energy  of  mind,  not  a  happy  man.  Post  equitem 
sedet  atra  cura  :  he  drives  the  chariot  of  the  Beformation  with 
fury,  but  he  has  a  lingering  gloom  at  heart.  Even  his  fury  is 
partly  a  remedial  one,  indulged  as  a  balance  and  quietus  to  a 
strong  natural  counter  sadness.  And  his  immoderate  mirth 
and  flow  of  spirits  sit  often  but  superficially  upon  him,  covering 
and  relieving  an  inwardly  vexed  and  troubled  mind,  rather 
than  representing  a  light  one. 

But  it  is  evident  that  melancholy,  like  other  mental  passions 
and  affections,  should  be  under  the  control  of  reason.  The 
passion  of  anger  is  in  itself  a  noble  and  lofty  one,  and  yet  is 
liable  to  run  into  coarseness  and  madness,  unless  it  is  checked 
by  a  higher  principle.  The  melancholic  tendencies  of  the  human 
character,  however  deep  and  true  a  part  of  it,  must  in  the  same 
way  be  kept  in  check  by  a  higher  principle.  Christian  reason, 
i.e.  faith,  informs  us  that  this  whole  system  of  things,  notwith¬ 
standing  the  disturbing  appearances  in  it,  will  finally  issue  in 
absolute  good.  Christian  reason,  therefore,  forbids  vague,  irregu¬ 
lar,  and  licentious  melancholy.  Erom  the  ultimate  height  of  a 
certain  issue  it  controls  the  commotions  and  depressions,  the  dark¬ 
ness  and  troubles,  of  passionate  and  sensitive  nature.  It  brings 
the  melancholy  of  the  human  character  into  form  and  shape  ; 
chastens,  subdue, s,  and  refines  it.  Go  over  in  succession  the 
portraits  of  those  great  religious  men  upon  whom  the  world 
has  tried  all  its  discouragements  and  disappointments,  and  see 
if  in  any  one  of  them  there  appears  a  symptom  of  loose  sub¬ 
mission  to  the  involuntary  depressions  of  nature.  Melancholy, 
indeed,  appears,  but  it  is  a  melancholy  of  perfect  form  and 
mould  ;  tranquil,  grave,  and  self-possessed,  as  if  a  sculptor  had 
modelled  it.  You  see  this  distinctive  fact,  that  in  their  case 
the  mind  was  above  its  own  melancholy,  looked  down  calmly 
upon  it  as  an  inferior  part  of  itself ;  kept  it  under,  and  reduced 
it  to  order  and  law.  You  see  that,  conversing  and  living  in 


414 


Luther. 


heart  with  the  One  Eternal  substance  of  Good,  they  were  not 
liable  to  be  unsettled  and  confounded  at  the  appearances  of  evil. 

But  Luther  could  not  check  or  control  his  melancholic  tem¬ 
perament  ;  and  it  consequently  rose  into  morbid  excesses,  got 
the  upper  hand,  and  became  oppressive  and  overwhelming.  He 
describes  himself  as  suffering  often  horrible  fits  of  despair. 
Nay,  he  even  incorporated  these  loose  and  degrading  prostra¬ 
tions  into  his  system,  and  tested  the  religious  advancement  of 
the  believer  by  them.  Does  he  feel  occasionally  desperate,  all 
ground  of  faith  gone,  and  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil 
triumphant  ? — if  so,  he  is  a  child  of  God ;  if  not,  he  is  without 
his  proper  Christian  evidences  and  tokens.  Such  melancholy  as 
this  was  a  loose  disordered  one — a  mere  cowering  before  the 
principle  of  evil ;  for  nobody  can  despair,  even  of  his  own  per¬ 
sonal  salvation,  without  a  slavish  succumbing  for  the  time 
to  evil,  as  if  it  had,  in  his  own  case  at  any  rate,  a  necessary 
domination.  Luther  indeed  could  not  control  his  melancholy, 
because  he  did  not  discipline  himself.  The  first  thing  which  a 
man  of  a  melancholic  temperament  ought  to  do,  if  he  wants  to 
keep  that  temperament  in  order,  is  to  practise  some  self-dis¬ 
cipline.  Many  great  men  have  had  exactly  the  same  constitu¬ 
tion  as  Luther,  and  have  controlled  it  by  this  means.  Bat 
Luther  did  not  discipline  himself ;  his  life  was  egregiously 
defective  on  that  head.  He  vented  his  humours  unscrupulously, 
used  his  tongue  immoderately,  ate  and  drank  freely,  and  did 
generally  what  he  liked.  With  many  generous  and  noble  gifts, 
he  was  not  a  self- disciplinarian  ;  and  he  suffered  for  it.  If  the 
antagonist  to  melancholy  is  hope,  we  have  the  word  of  an 
apostle  for  the  truth,  that  this  hope  can  only  come  by  experi¬ 
ence,  and  that  this  experience  can  only  come  by  practice.  It 
is  impossible  that  a  man  can  have  real  substantial  hope,  i.e. 
belief  in  the  ultimate  triumph  of  good  over  evil,  who  does  not 
feel  and  experience  that  triumph  to  some  extent  in  himself. 
How  can  we  reason  but  from  what  we  know  ?  One  who  is 
conquering  evil  in  himself  has  actually  working  within  him  a 
portion  of  that  very  victorious  spirit  itself  which  is  to  conquer 
universal  evil ;  and,  believing  in  the  expansion  of  what  he 
actually  feels,  he  has  hope.  But  if  a  man  lets  himself  run  wild, 


Luther. 


415 


or  lie  fallow,  this  sensible  ground  of  hope  is  gone ;  and  he  will 
he  liable  to  fall  into  melancholy.  Hope  and  practice  act  and 
react  upon  each  other  :  hope  is  a  stimulus  to  practice  ;  practice 
is  the  foundation  of  hope.  On  the  other  hand,  a  lax  habit  of 
mind  protrudes  an  indefinite  gloom  before  it,  and  license  is 
compensated  for  by  melancholy. 

But  Luther’s  habit  became  worse  than  morbid.  The  reader 
may  qualify  it  as  he  likes,  hut  there  is  a  truth  contained  in  a 
summary  dictum  with  respect  to  a  particular  class  of  minds ; — 
that  they  cannot  he  melancholy  without  being  mad.  Crom¬ 
well’s  melancholy  ran  into  eccentricities  and  monkey  tricks  : 
“  starting  from  his  bed  in  the  dead  of  the  night,  and  troubled 
strangely  with  ‘phansies  about  the  cross’  of  Huntingdon,  he 
would,  after  an  interval,  suddenly  plunge  into  fantastic  shapes 
of  merriment.”  It  seems  invidious  to  allude  to  the  amiable 
Cowper;  at  the  same  time  he  is  an  instance  of  a  person  in 
whom  a  melancholy  madness  seems  to  have  had  its  full  swing, 
and  to  have  encountered  no  counteracting  power  in  his  mind. 
The  religion  of  the  Church  does  appear  to  have  a  power  of 
shaping  and  ordering  the  melancholy  of  the  human  mind,  while 
inferior  religions  too  often  let  it  grow  into  more  or  less  of  in¬ 
sanity.  Luther  alludes  in  his  Table-talk  to  temptations  he  had 
felt  to  commit  suicide  :  “  Sometimes  when  I  have  had  a  knife 
in  my  hand,  terrible  thoughts  have  come  upon  me.”  His 
melancholy  revelled  in  a  coarse  supernaturalism,  and  sum¬ 
moned  grotesque  phantoms  from  the  lower  world.  He  spoke 
of  one  being  as  constantly  near  him,  not  in  the  sense  in  which 
he  is  near  all  men,  as  mankind’s  great  tempter,  but  in  some 
extraordinary  and  local  way.  It  is  needless  to  introduce  here 
the  well-known  stories  which  describe  Luther’s  intimate  and 
continual  intercourse  with  the  devil ;  many  of  them  are  not 
fit  for  these  pages,  and  anybody  who  has  the  curiosity  may 
read  them  collected,  with  the  greatest  attention  to  his  conveni¬ 
ence,  in  the  sixth  chapter  of  the  book  of  M.  Michelet’s  Life. 
It  is  enough  to  say  that  Luther  speaks  of  a  repeated  local  and 
sensible  presence  of  the  devil,  manifesting  himself  by  sight, 
words,  and  even  by  touch.  We  speak  of  his  language.  How 
far  such  language  may  be  metaphorical  sometimes,  notwith- 


416 


Luther. 


standing  its  simple  and  matter-of-fact  surface,  we  will  not 
undertake  to  determine.  Luther  sometimes  alludes  to  the 
ordinary  operations  of  nature  as  those  of  the  devil,  and  ex¬ 
presses  in  words  a  personal  presence  of  that  being  where,  from 
the  nature  of  the  case,  he  could  hardly  really  mean  it.  “  One 
day,  when  there  was  a  great  storm  abroad,  Luther  said :  *  ’Tis 
the  devil  who  does  this ;  the  winds  are  nothing  else  hut  good 
and  had  spirits.  Hark  !  how  the  devil  is  puffing  and  blowing.’  ” 
So  in  another  instance,  an  ordinary  accident  is  attributed  to 
the  personal  agency  of  the  devil,  simply  because  it  is  an  awk¬ 
ward  one,  and  because  he  seems  to  consider  that  all  awkward 
events  proceed  from  the  devil,  as  the  evil  principle.  As  he 
was  uniting  Duke  Philip  of  Pomerania  and  the  Elector’s  sister, 
in  the  middle  of  the  marriage  ceremony  the  nuptial  ring  escaped 
from  his  hold.  He  was  seized  with  temporary  alarm,  but  soon 
recovering  himself  exclaimed  :  “  Hark  ye,  devil,  this  is  no 
affair  of  mine  !  ’tis  all  lost  time  for  thee.”  Every  thing  or 
person,  in  short,  which  offended  Luther  was  the  devil  in 
Luther’s  eyes  : — To  Carlstadt,  “  I  know  thee,  devil  of  mine.” 
To  the  Anabaptists,  “Well,  good  devil,  what  next?”  The  use 
of  the  name  was  a  vent  for  his  irritability,  and  answered  for 
him  a  purpose  very  analogous  to  that  which  it  answers  among 
the  vulgar.  It  was  a  form  of  swearing ;  though  differing 
widely  from  ordinary  swearing  in  being  significant,  and  con¬ 
nected  with  a  general  view.  He  had  a  strong  sense  of  abstract 
evil ;  he  retaliated  on  all  offensive  matter  by  referring  it  im¬ 
mediately  to  this  evil ;  and  a  religious  philosophy  mixed  with 
the  temper  of  common  vituperation.  Such  passages  as  these 
suggest  a  doubt  how  far  Luther’s  relation  of  any  sensible  acts 
and  presence  of  Satan  is  real  or  metaphorical.  His  language 
admits  sometimes  of  a  simply  vituperative,  sometimes  of  a 
simply  imaginative,  meaning,  while  the  surface  is  a  matter-of- 
fact  one ;  and  Luther  betrays  a  prophetic  sympathy  with  that 
peculiarly  German  line  of  thought  which,  spreading  personality 
on  the  largest  scale  throughout  nature,  and  making  individuals 
of  winds,  trees,  and  brooks,  leaves  the  reader  in  doubt  all  the 
time  whether  the  personality  which  the  story  intends  is  a  real 
or  practical  one.  On  the  other  hand,  he  evidently  held  with 


Luther. 


417 


great  pertinacity  to  the  old  popular  legends  of  sensible  Satanic 
agency,  and  his  allusions  have  generally  a  matter-of-fact  tone 
which  it  is  difficult  to  explain  away.  He  describes  himself, 
then,  as  in  this  close  and  intimate  intercourse  with  the  devil ; 
the  devil  presses  him  with  arguments,  draws  him  out  of  rooms, 
forces  him  out  of  bed,  and  throws  him  into  perspirations.  “  I 
know  the  devil  thoroughly  well :  he  has  often  had  very  hard 
hold  of  me,  but  he  has  been  obliged  to  let  me  go  at  last :  he  has 
over  and  over  again  pressed  me  so  close  that  I  hardly  knew 
whether  I  was  alive  or  dead.”  These  attacks  aimed  at  his 
faith ;  they  “  threw  him  sometimes  into  such  despair  that  he 
did  not  know  whether  there  was  a  God,  and  had  great  doubts 
of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ;”  and  he  referred  to  them  afterwards 
as  “  agonies,”  with  the  same  pride  with  which  a  soldier  refers 
to  his  battles.  The  celebrated  midnight  disputation  with  the 
devil  at  the  castle  of  Wartburg,  which  need  not  be  more  than 
alluded  to  here,  was  one  of  these.  In  that  interview  the  accuser 
threw  in  his  teeth  all  his  compliances  with  the  established 
superstitions  during  his  days  of  ignorance,  and  especially  his 
celebration  of  the  mass ;  and  a  long  argument  against  the  mass 
is  put  into  the  devil’s  mouth.  We  will  take  this  opportunity 
of  correcting  a  mistake  of  M.  Audin  and  some  others  with 
respect  to  this  argument.  M.  Audin  regards  it  as  a  genuine 
theological  argument  on  the  part  of  the  devil,  carried  on  with 
the  object  of  disproving  the  doctrine  of  the  mass  ;  and  makes 
it  a  confession  on  Luther’s  part  that  he  and  the  devil  agreed 
together  in  opinion.  It  is  impossible,  of  course,  that  Luther 
could  mean  this ;  because,  in  such  a  confession  he  would  be 
ipso  facto  confessing  himself  in  the  wrong  with  respect  to  his 
theology,  and  this,  it  is  unnecessary  to  say,  he  never  did.  The 
devil  in  this  interview  does  not  argue  as  a  theologian  but  as  an 
accuser ;  nor  is  the  conclusion  of  the  erroneousness  of  the  mass 
his  object,  but  the  proof,  through  that  conclusion,  of  Luther’s 
sin  in  having  celebrated  it.  An  offence  must  be  proved  to  be 
such  before  the  offender  is  convicted  in  consequence :  and  the 
devil  argues  for  the  sinfulness  of  the  mass  as  he  would  for  that 
of  any  moral  offence,  not  in  order  to  express  a  theological  view 
in  the  one  case,  or  a  moral  view  in  the  other,  but  in  order  to 

M.E.-I.]  2  D 


4iS 


Ltd  her. 


compass  a  conviction  of  a  man.  The  function  of  accuser  is 
always  the  principal  one  assigned  to  Satan  by  Luther :  the 
devil  “  is  always  placing  before  his  eyes  the  law,  sin,  and  death, 
and  makes  use  of  this  triad  to  torment  him,”  “  Est  mirabilis 
artifex  aggravandi  peccatum “he  goes  on  with  the  old  story, 
accusing  him  of  sin and  in  this  capacity  of  accuser  he  visited 
Luther  at  Wartburg. 

Upon  those  personal  conflicts  with  Satan,  and  the  character 
of  Christian  trials  which  Luther  attributes  to  them,  one  re¬ 
mark  is  to  be  made.  That  is  unquestionably  an  absurd  and 
dangerous  view  which  in  any  degree  tends  to  divert  attention 
from  the  substantial  trials  of  substantial  life  to  an  eccentric 
and  indescribable  class  of  trials.  The  great  trials  of  life  are  of 
one  substantial  class :  “Every  man  is  tempted,”  says  St.  James, 
“  when  he  is  drawn  away  of  his  own  lust  and  enticed.”  The 
medium  of  ordinary  nature  is  the  medium  through  which  our 
trial  comes ;  and  the  temptations  of  life  lie  in  the  every-day 
lusts,  appetites,  and  passions  which  we  carry  about  with  us  in 
our  own  bodies  and  minds.  If  any  view  of  Christian  warfare 
draws  us  away  from  these,  as  the  great,  difficult,  and  arduous 
trials  of  life,  there  is  no  necessity  to  ask  another  question ;  the 
view  must  be  absurd.  But  Luther’s  view  goes  far  to  produce 
this  result.  He  has  a  certain  class  of  irregular  and  unintelli¬ 
gible,  not  to  say  ridiculous,  trials,  which  he  sets  up  as  the  great 
ones  of  Christian  life ;  far  above  the  ordinary  ones,  of  which 
he  speaks  quite  slightingly  in  comparison :  “  The  temptation 
of  the  flesh  is  a  small  matter,  but  God  defend  us  from  the  great 
temptations  which  touch  upon  eternity ;  when  we  are  beaten 
about  among  them,  we  know  not  whether  God  is  the  devil  or 
the  devil  God  that  is  to  say,  he  asserts  that  these  irregular 
and  eccentric  “  agonies  ”  we  are  speaking  of,  these  sensible 
personal  assaults  of  Satan  producing  fright  and  perspiration, 
are  much  more  serious  and  important  trials  than  the  tempta¬ 
tions  of  the  flesh.  A  more  absurd  and  debasing  view  of  human 
trial  could  not  well  be  conceived.  The  devil  is  indeed,  as  we 
know  from  Scripture,  our  great  enemy.  But  that  mighty  and 
dreadful  being,  to  whom,  of  all  the  fallen  creatures  of  God,  the 
wisdom  of  the  serpent  first  belonged,  knows  better  than  to 


Luther. 


4l9 


assail  the  human  race  by  the  mere  frightening  and  overwhelm¬ 
ing  power  of  a  real  and  direct  presence.  He  assails  us  through 
that  machinery  of  the  flesh  and  the  world  by  which  we  are 
surrounded,  and  through  that  medium  gets  access  to  the  real 
substantial  man.  To  appear  and  to  frighten  is  child’s-play ; 
power  which  acts  formidably  acts  through  a  medium.  The 
world’s  great  tempter  made  a  common  local  assailant  of,  loses 
his  dreadful  character,  and  becomes  as  the  legendary  stories, 
and  as  the  style  of  Luther’s  own  remarks  upon  him  abundantly 
indicates,  a  laughing-stock.  The  weight  of  invisibility  taken 
off,  the  human  mind  is  at  ease,  and  can  amuse  itself,  and  joke 
at  his  expense.  This  constant  intercourse  with  a  sensible 
Satan,  and  the  elevation  of  this  form  of  temptation  above  the 
substantial  and  natural  ones,  have  their  fruits  in  Luther’s  life. 
While  he  was  attending  to  the  trials  which  made  him  perspire, 
he  neglected  those  which  made  him  rage  and  vilify ;  and  the 
temptations  of  the  flesh,  of  which  he  thought  so  slightingly,  in 
some  degree  vindicated  their  position. 

Of  the  melancholic  habit  of  Luther’s  mind,  thus  rough, 
grotesque,  unshaped,  undisciplined,  there  was  another  and  an 
important  development.  To  one  system  or  theory  undisci¬ 
plined  melancholy  generally  goes  to  satisfy  and  quiet  itself ; 
and  that  is  fatalism.  The  theory  of  fatalism  has  this  peculiar 
attraction,  that  by  one  single  simple  idea,  which  occupies  no 
more  space  than  a  needle’s  point  in  the  mind,  it  accounts  for 
all  things  that  ever  were  or  can  be,  the  whole  medley  of  this 
visible  system — the  one  idea,  viz.  of  “  must.”  As  an  artificial 
goal  to  the  intellect,  the  fatalist  theory  is  eminently  great  and 
satisfying.  Luther  was  a  fatalist ;  that  is  to  say,  he  was  an 
extreme  predestinarian.  Hot  a  believer  in  simple  blind  fate,  he 
persisted  in  carrying  out  the  one  truth  of  God’s  foreknowledge 
into  all  its  logical  consequences  without  qualification  from 
other  truths.  He  took  his  stand  on  the  idea  of  Deity,  and 
argued  thus.  The  idea  of  Deity  implies  absolute  and  omni¬ 
potent  predestination ;  free  will  is  contrary  to  predestination, 
therefore  free  will  is  contrary  to  the  idea  of  Deity.  He  first 
defined  free  will  as  licentious,  and  insulting  to  the  Divine  pre¬ 
rogative,  and  then  condemned  it  as  such.  To  allow  man  free 


420 


Luther. 


will  and  mastery  over  his  own  actions  was  to  give  the  Deity 
nothing  to  do  but  to  stand  by  an  idle  spectator  of  the  world’s 
course,  waiting  for  a  chance  issue ;  to  convert  him  into  an 
“  idolum  Fortunce”  a  god  like  Homer’s,  who  was  absent  from 
his  government  because  he  had  gone  to  dine  with  the  Ethiopians. 
This  was  impossible,  therefore  man  could  not  have  free  will  and 
mastery  over  his  own  actions.1  He  then  carried  his  theory 
through  the  opposition  of  facts  and  the  repugnancy  of  nature. 
Allowing  the  phenomenon  of  free  will,  he  explained  it  as  being 
a  phenomenon  only,  and  not  a  reality.  We  are  not  dragged 
by  the  neck,  he  says,  to  do  things  which  we  hate;  we  do 
voluntarily  that  which  we  will  to  do,  but  that  very  will  is  a 
necessary  will,  and  not  a  free  one.2 

There  is  not  seldom  in  Luther’s  air,  action,  language,  that 
which,  when  once  our  attention  has  caught  it,  carries  us  back 
to  these  ideas  of  fatalism.  A  careless  ease,  an  abandon,  a 
species  of  indifference,  as  if  not  he  but  some  external  power 
were  acting,  appears.  Eetrospects  of  life  have  generally,  in¬ 
deed,  something  of  a  dreamy  tone  about  them,  and  yet  that 

1  “  Liberum  arbitrium  nemini  nisi  soli  Deo  convenit.  Arbitrium  fortassis 
homini  aliquod  recte  attribuis,  sed  liberum  arbitrium  tribuere  in  rebus  divinis 
nimium  est.  Quod  liberi  arbitrii  vox  omnium  aurium  judicio  proprie  id 
dicitur,  quod  potest  et  facit  erga  Deum  qusecunque  Hbuerit,  nulla  lege,  nullo 
imperio  coliibitum.  Neque  enim  servum  dixeris  liberum  qui  sub  imperio 
domini  agit :  quanto  minus  liominem  vel  Angelum  recte  liberum  dicimus, 
qui  sub  imperio  plenissimo  Dei  (ut  peccatum  et  mortem  taceam)  sic  degunt, 
ut  nee  momento  consistere  suis  viribus  possint.” — Oyer.  vol.  ii.  p.  442. 

Again — 

“  Nee  patimur  neque  recipimus  mediocritatem  illam,  quam  nobis  consulit 
bono,  ut  credo,  animo  ;  scilicet  ut  libero  arbitrio  perpusillum  concedamus, 
quo  facilius  pugnantia  Scripturse  et  incommoda  prsedicta  tollantur.  Nam  ista 
mediocritate  nihil  est  causse  consultum  neque  quidquam  profectum.  .  .  . 
Ideo  ad  extrema  eundum  est,  ut  totum  negetur  liberum  arbitrium,  et  omnia 
ad  Deum  referantur.” — Oyer.  vol.  i.  p.  475. 

2  “  Necessario  dico,  non  coacte  sed  necessitate  immutabilitatis.  Non 
violenter,  velut  raptus  obtorto  collo,  nolens  facit  malum,  sed  sponte  et 
libente  voluntate  facit.  Yerum  hanc  libentiam  non  potest  suis  viribus  omit- 
tere,  coercere,  aut  mutare,  sed  pergit  vol'endo  et  libendo.” — De  Serv.  Arbit., 
Oyer.  vol.  ii.  p.  434. 

“  Quid  ad  me  si  liberum  arbitrium  non  cogatur  sed  volenter  faciat  quod 
facit  ?  Sufficit  mibi  quod  concedis  necessario  fore,  ut  volenter  faciat,  nec 
aliter  habere  se  queat,  si  Deus  ita  prsescierit.” — Oyer.  vol.  ii.  p.  463.  The 
concession  alluded  to  is  the  “  necessitas  consequents,”  or  the  predestination 
on  God’s  part,  which  Erasmus  of  course  allowed,  but  balanced  by  denying 
the  “  necessitas  consequents,”  i.e.  denying  subsequent  slavery  of  will  on 
man’s  part.  Luther  takes  his  concession  without  the  counterbalance  to  it. 


Luther. 


42 1 

tone  in  Luther’s  attracts  our  attention :  “  My  father  went  to 
Mansfeldt,  and  became  a  miner  there.  It  was  there  I  was  born. 
That  I  was  afterwards  to  become  bachelor  of  arts,  doctor  of 
divinity,  and  what  not,  was  assuredly  not  written  in  the  stars, 
at  least  not  to  ordinary  readers.  How  I  astonished  everybody 
when  I  turned  monk  !  and  again  when  I  exchanged  the  brown 
cap  for  another.  These  things  greatly  vexed  my  father ;  nay, 
made  him  quite  ill  for  a  time.  After  that  I  got  pulling  the 
Pope  about  by  the  hair  of  his  head ;  I  married  a  runaway  nun  ; 
I  had  children  by  her.  Who  saw  these  things  in  the  stars  ? 
Who  would  have  told  any  one  beforehand  they  were  to  happen  ?” 
Again,  it  is  often  difficult  to  discriminate  between  what  is 
positive  energy,  and  what  is  a  negative  abandonment  of  himself 
to  a  swing.  Much  of  the  actual  strength  of  his  style,  for 
instance,  seems  to  come  from  carelessness  to  what  he  says,  and 
his  vigour  to  have  much  to  do  with  the  absence  of  an  internal 
check.  The  prodigious  ease  and  freedom  with  which  he  made 
his  observations  upon  men  and  things  is  that  almost  of  an 
irresponsible  person.  His  summary  treatment  of  Scripture, 
bestowed  with  such  an  air  of  negligence,  suggests  the  same 
remark.  When  he  criticises  the  Epistle  of  St.  James  in  the 
passage  quoted  above,  and  decides  that  it  contains  many  excel¬ 
lent  remarks,  and  that  its  author  was  doubtless  a  worthy  man, 
though  antiquated  in  his  opinions, — that  he,  Luther,  did  not 
consider  him  inspired,  but  had  no  objection  to  any  one  else 
considering  him  so  who  chose, — we  can  almost  suppose  him 
dreaming,  so  little  does  he  seem  to  realise  the  shock  he  is 
giving  to  Christian  faith.  Luther’s  career,  with  all  its  activities, 
betrays  some  features  of  the  dream,  and  he  seems  to  move  with 
a  self- moving  order  of  events.  Thus  he  marries  his  Catharine 
Bora  rather  as  if  he  were  dreaming.  He  seems  hardly  to  know 
why  he  marries ;  no  strong  attachment  to  her,  no  call  to  mar¬ 
riage  generally,  induces  him.  The  step  lowered  him  in  his  own 
estimation.  Ho  theory  could  make  the  marriage  of  a  monk 
and  a  nun  not  ignominious ;  no  theory  could  make  it  necessary 
for  Luther  to  marry  at  all.  To  the  apostle  of  a  great  religious 
movement,  who  had  lived  forty  years  of  his  life  without  marry¬ 
ing,  the  pleasures  of  a  domestic  life  could  not  be  necessary ; 


422 


Luther . 


and  lie  had  plenty  to  do  without  encumbering  himself  with  its 
cares.  Fate,  however,  brought  them  together;  she  came  in  his 
way,  and  he  married  her,  feeling  all  the  time  the  deep  blow  to 
his  self-respect.  He  would  fain  have  converted  the  humilia¬ 
tion  into  a  matter  of  spiritual  congratulation,  and  believed  that 
“devils  wept  and  angels  smiled”  over  it;  but  an  injured  self- 
respect  disturbed  him,  and  did  not  leave  him  easy  even  in  the 
midst  of  the  charms  and  affections  of  wife  and  home, 

“  Medio  de  fonte  leporum 
Surgit  amari  aliquid,  quod  in  ipsis  iioribus  angat.” 

The  stars  were  unusually  brilliant  one  evening  when  he  and 
Catharine  were  walking  in  the  garden.  “  What  a  brilliant 
light !”  said  Luther,  as  he  looked  upward ;  “  but  it  burns  not  for 
us.”  “  And  why  are  we  to  be  excluded  from  the  kingdom  of 
heaven?”  asked  Catharine.  “Perhaps,”  said  Luther,  with  a 
sigh,  “  because  we  left  our  convents.”  Catharine — “  Shall  we 
return  then?”  Luther — “  It  is  too  late  to  do  that.” 

To  the  consolatory  side,  then,  of  this  melancholy  and  fatalist 
temper,  Luther  betook  himself,  as  the  Reformation,  getting  in 
its  spread  more  and  more  out  of  his  hands,  cast  up  its  various, 
ugly,  and  shapeless  developments.  He  went  on  repeating  to 
himself — “  It  must  be ;  this  is  the  way  of  the  world,  this  is 
what  was  to  be  expected.”  He  reposed  disdainfully  in  the 
general  maxim  of  the  unvarying  ingratitude  of  human  nature 
to  all  its  benefactors,  temporal  and  spiritual.  Here  had  he 
been  working  all  his  life  for  the  very  persons  who  were  now 
throwing  him  off,  and  setting  up  their  own  mongrel  and  vile 
fancies.  He  had  suffered  as  well  as  worked ;  he  had  gone 
through  all  the  dark,  subterranean,  preparatory  gloom  by  which 
a  great  movement  is  ushered  in,  and  borne  the  weight  of  innu¬ 
merable  internal  struggles,  temptations,  and  depressions,  and 
now  men,  who  had  done  nothing  but  enjoy  the  fruits,  claimed 
the  credit  and  usurped  the  authority.  Audaculi !  Pine  boasters 
and  braggers  now  that  the  result  ws  obtained ;  how  would 
they  have  gone  through  the  task  of  obtaining  it  ?  What  mental 
agonies  had  they  had ;  those  tokens  of  the  Spirit,  those  only 
sure  evidences  of  God’s  proving  and  chastening  love  ?  They 
could  enjoy  day  and  sunshine  well  enough,  but  had  they  felt 


Luther. 


423 


the  horrors  of  the  night  ?  However,  ingratitude  was  the  pro¬ 
perty  of  human  nature.  “  The  world  did  not  deserve  to  have 
anything  done  for  it  by  men  of  heart  and  conscience.”  Even 
his  domestic  distresses  assumed  the  shape  of  results  of  this 
universal  law.  One  of  his  sons  was  a  disobedient  boy.  “  He 
almost  killed  me  once,  and  ever  since  I  have  lost  all  my  strength 
of  body.  Thanks  to  him,  I  now  thoroughly  understand  that 
passage  where  St.  Paul  speaks  of  children  who  kill  their  parents, 
not  by  the  sword,  but  by  disobedience.  Such  children  seldom 
live  long,  and  are  never  happy.  .  .  .  Oh  God !  how  wicked  is 
this  world  !  how  monstrous  the  times  in  which  we  live  !  These 
are  the  times  of  which  Christ  said,  When  the  Son  of  Man 
cometh ,  shall  he  find  faith  on  the  earth  ?  Happy  they  who  died 
ere  these  days  came  upon  the  world  !”  The  days  were  come  to 
which  the  prophecy — “  My  Spirit  shall  not  always  strive  with 
men” — pointed;  the  last  punishment  which  God  through  the 
mouth  of  the  holy  patriarchs  threatened  was  now  in  execu¬ 
tion,  and  Germany  was  specially  feeling  it.  “See  how  Satan 
hasteneth  and  busieth  himself;  what  troops  of  sects  he  hath 
raised  against  us  !  and  what  is  to  happen  when  I  die  ? 
What  hosts  of  Sacramentaries,  Anabaptists,  Antinomians,  Ser- 
vetians,  Campanistae,  and  heretics  of  all  kinds  will  arise  V9  He 
questioned  even  whether  the  Bible  itself  would  long  keep  its 
hold.  “There  was  commencing  in  the  world  a  weariness  of 
the  word  of  God — a  sign  of  ill  promise.  One  of  these  days 
some  new  books  would  be  started  in  competition,  and  the  Bible 
be  despised,  slighted,  pushed  into  a  corner,  and  thrown  under 
the  table.”  He  thought,  as  persons  have  often  done  when 
events  have  disturbed  them  and  hopes  have  been  disappointed, 
that  the  end  of  the  world  was  approaching.  “  In  December  last 
the  whole  heavens  were  seen  on  fire  above  the  Church  of  Bres¬ 
lau,  and  another  day  there  were  witnessed  in  the  same  place 
two  circles  of  fire,  one  within  the  other,  and  in  the  centre  of 
them  a  blazing  pillar.  These  signs  announce,  it  is  my  firm 
opinion,  the  approach  of  the  last  day.  The  empire  is  falling, 
kings  are  falling,  princes  are  falling,  the  whole  world  totters, 
and,  like  a  great  house  about  to  tumble  down,  manifests  its 
coming  destruction  by  wide  gaps  and  crevices  on  its  surface. 


424 


Luther. 


This  will  infallibly  happen,  and  ere  long.”  “The  hour  of  mid¬ 
night  approaches,  when  the  cry  will  be  heard,  Behold,  the 
Bridegroom  cometh,  go  ye  out  to  meet  Him.” 

Under  the  vexation,  annoyance,  and  sense  of  ill-usage 
which  the  medley  of  earthly  events  produces  in  those  who  have 
taken  a  prominent  part  in  them,  the  mind  often  takes  refuge  in 
the  idea  of  an  end.  It  retaliates  on  its  own  discomforts  by  a 
keen  realising  of  the  absolute  ultimate  cessation  of  that  system 
of  things  which  produces  them ;  and  brings  in  the  future  to 
annihilate  the  present.  That  which  will  once  be  quite  certainly 
over,  seems  substantially  over  now,  and  to  exist  only  by  acci¬ 
dent,  and  not  in  the  nature  of  things.  The  consolatory  powers 
of  this  idea  are  to  a  certain  extent,  indeed,  sanctioned  by  Scrip¬ 
ture  ;  and  the  prophetical  parts  of  the  Old  Testament,  and 
almost  all  parts  of  the  Hew,  direct  us  in  some  way  to  them. 
The  idea  of  an  end  again  suggests  the  idea  of  that  end  shortly 
approaching  :  we  realise  the  certainty  of  it  by  imagining  its 
vicinity.  Thus,  from  the  beginning  of  Christianity  downwards, 
the  pious  notion  has  ever  more  or  less  prevailed  in  the  Church 
that  the  end  of  the  world  was  shortly  approaching,  and  even 
Apostles  seem  to  have  entertained  it.  Among  the  primitive 
Christians  it  was  general ;  in  every  age  of  the  Church  any 
alarming  posture  of  affairs,  any  general  calamity,  political, 
ecclesiastical,  or  physical,  has  been  sufficient  to  elicit  it,  and 
we  see  the  tendency  even  in  our  own  times.  Luther  took 
refuge,  then,  in  this  idea  :  but  he  did  so  morbidly  and  angrily. 
He  embraced  it  in  the  spirit  of  a  person  who  felt  an  actual 
private  interest,  and  private  pique  gratified  by  its  accomplish¬ 
ment.  A  great  movement  of  his  own  was  producing  many  bad 
effects,  and  promising  many  worse  :  and  he  was  disappointed,  and 
he  was  apprehensive.  There  is  something  remarkable  in  the 
way  in  which  Luther  seems  not  to  have  been  able  to  throw 
himself  confidently  upon  the  good  part  of  human  nature,  for 
taking  in  and  carrying  out  his  system  as  he  wished.  Some 
founders  of  systems  have  been  able  to  do  this  ;  they  have  said 
to  themselves  :  This  system  will  do  its  work  well ;  many  will 
abuse  it,  but,  on  the  whole,  the  good  part  of  human  nature 
will  be  in  alliance  with  it,  and  carry  it  out  with  substantial 


L  nt her. 


425 


success.  Luther  had  no  solid  good  part  of  human  nature  to 
depend  on  in  this  way ;  his  theory  made  of  man  a  broken  reed 
only,  and  he  could  not  trust  him  for  doing  anything  like 
justice  to  his  ideas.  He  had  no  pledge  for  events,  and  saw 
wildness  and  disorder  before  him.  A  general  gloom  as  to  the 
future  thus  hung  over  the  latter  part  of  his  life.  First,  he  dis¬ 
trusted  it,  and  secondly,  he  cut  it  short.  Insecure  as  to  the 
ultimate  issues  of  a  great  movement,  the  actual  contents  of  the 
womb  of  time,  the  rising  attitude  of  human  thought ;  alarmed 
at  symptoms,  repelled  by  facts,  he  relieved  his  prospect  by 
closing  it  up.  He  placed  a  dead  wall  before  his  eyes,  and  saw 
nothing  beyond  it.  He  fixed  his  imagination  on  an  end,  and 
wound  up  the  hopeless  disorders  of  a  hopeless  scene  in  an 
immediate  day  of  judgment. 

In  this  sketch  of  Luther’s  character  and  career  we  have 
omitted,  or  but  incidentally  alluded  to,  one  striking  side  of  him, 
and  attended  to  the  deeper  rather  than  to  the  lighter  features. 
We  have  seen  him  as  a  religious  enthusiast,  with  the  natural 
melancholy  and  the  profound  emotions  which  attach  to  such  a 
character :  and  we  have  seen  him  as  a  practical  man, — a 
shrewd,  energetic,  and  statesmanlike  leader  and  reformer. 
Another  and  a  lighter  part  of  him  yet  remains  ;  but  it  falls  so 
naturally  under  the  concluding  head  of  this  article,  to  which  we 
are  now  approaching,  that  we  shall  not  interrupt  the  order  of 
our  remarks  to  introduce  it  previously. 

One  not  unimportant  inquiry  then  comes  in,  as  a  natural 
appendage  or  conclusion  to  this  article,  and  that  is,  What 
consequences  Luther  has  left  behind  him  of  his  own  peculiar 
religious  mould,  and  how  far  he  has  managed  to  impress  him¬ 
self  upon  posterity  :  what  ethical  effects  (for  to  go  into  all 
the  effects  would  be  too  large  an  inquiry  for  our  limits)  survive 
of  so  wonderful  a  religious  phenomenon  ? 

First  then  we  turn  to  the  nation  to  which  Luther  belonged, 
and  to  wdiich  his  labours  were  devoted,  and  ask  how  far  Luther 
has  impressed  himself  upon  that  nation,  and  left  his  own  type 
visible  in  it.  Turning  to  that  nation  we  certainly  see  a  pecu¬ 
liar  type  of  character.  The  resident  in  Germany  sends  home 
his  description  of  it :  German  literature  and  German  poetry  in 


426 


Luther. 


a  great  degree  bear  tlieir  own  witness  to  it.  We  see  first,  as  a 
feature  in  the  German  character,  a  deep  genial  appreciation  of 
the  social  and  cheerful  side  of  human  life.  The  German  is 
warm  and  hearty,  full  of  lively  feelings  and  affections,  and  most 
powerfully  susceptible  of  that  happiness  which  proceeds  from 
their  gratification.  He  enters  into  social  and  family  life  w7ith  a 
poetical  enthusiasm,  and  endows  the  affections  of  nature  with 
peculiar  life  and  intensity.  A  peculiar  appreciation  of  nature 
herself  is  also  apparent  in  him.  The  German  descriptive  poet 
forms  with  the  beauty  and  splendour,  the  life  and  fertility,  of 
nature,  an  intimacy,  and  derives  from  them  an  enjoyment  which 
no  poet  except  himself,  or  one  who  has  caught  his  spirit, 
does.  He  feels  nature  mingling  with  his  soul,  and  conversing 
with  him ;  he  gives  her  an  almost  personal  life.  Trees,  herbs, 
and  flowers,  the  winds  and  waves,  the  storm  and  sunshine,  the 
clouds  and  sky,  black  forest  and  fertile  field,  mountain  and 
plain,  valley  and  rock,  and  all  the  animal  life  which  inhabits 
them,  speak  and  hold  communion  with  him  as  if  they  were  in¬ 
telligent  things.  But  with  this  genial  and  overflowing  apprecia¬ 
tion  of  nature,  animate  and  inanimate,  the  world  physical  and 
social,  there  mingles  a  subtle  spirit  which  ensnares  and  corrupts. 
The  forms  of  feeling  are  too  luxuriant  to  be  solid,  and  too 
expanded  to  be  safe.  The  love  of  all  natural  things,  matter  or 
mind,  needs  reserve  to  keep  it  pure  and  healthy ;  and  a  cautious 
policy  is  as  necessary  in  the  world  of  feeling  as  it  is  in  that  of 
action.  Wisdom  speaks  one  language  here — Hold  back  ;  dis¬ 
trust  :  “  Know  thyself,”  and  be  sure  that  all  is  sound  before 
the  valve  is  opened.  Caution  is  an  actual  part  of  true  feeling, 
a  substantial  ingredient  in  its  nature  ;  as  in  chemistry  one  gas 
often  enters  into  the  composition  of  another.  Those  sacred 
poets  of  the  old  pagan  world  who  sang  the  praises  of  alSco 9 
taught  this  lesson  :  they  taught  that  there  was  something  in 
human  nature  higher  than  mere  feeling,  a  holy  monitor  to 
whom  all  affection  was  meant  to  bow,  and  absolutely  commit 
itself  for  training  and  fashioning.  This  lesson  old  pagan 
philosophy,  though  w7ith  the  repulsive  and  daring  exaggeration 
incident  to  human  thinking,  taught;  when  stoic  and  cynic 
warned  men  of  their  feelings,  as  if  they  were  mere  perturbations 


Luther. 


427 

and  diseases.  The  social  feeling  of  the  German  overleaps  this 
caution ;  and  the  popular  fiction  which  describes  German  life 
betrays  the  fault.  The  social  interior  exhibited  there  is  one  in 
which  the  affections  of  nature  luxuriate  and  exceed  :  there  is  a 
flood  of  mutual  devotion  ;  minds  are  wrapped  up  in  each  other, 
with  an  apparent  forgetfulness  that  there  are  other  people  in 
the  world  beside  themselves  ;  an  elysian  self-importance  per¬ 
vades  the  scene,  and  we  are  merged  into  a  central  whirlpool 
of  interest  and  emotion.  Such  a  luxuriance  is  too  great  to 
stand ;  the  scene  approaches  too  nearly  to  the  sensual ;  head 
and  heart  swim  ;  and  finally  one  infallible  symptom  of  disease 
appears  in  the  shape  of  one  prevailing  fault  to  which  all  point 
as  the  blot  on  German  social  life.  Too  wildly  and  fiercely 
intent  on  a  legitimate  happiness,  feeling  runs  into  illegitimate, 
and  finds  the  law  of  fidelity  too  tight  a  chain.  Undisciplined 
love  wanders  restlessly  ;  and  self-indulgent  fancy  unsettles  the 
stableness,  and  stains  the  sanctity  of  domestic  life.  The  Ger¬ 
man  appreciation  of  nature  equally  overleaps  this  caution ;  and 
if  it  has  the  merits  of  an  overflowing  enthusiasm,  plunges  deep 
into  the  dangers  too.  The  poet  adores  a  perishing  external 
surface  as  if  it  were  the  substance ;  he  falls  before  the  rock  or 
tnountain  as  if  it  were  a  god ;  he  breathes  into  nature  a  kind 
of  personal  divinity ;  he  loves  and  thanks  devoutly  his 
mother-earth  for  her  luxuriance  and  beauty,  her  tenderness  and 
care  :  he  idolises  the  creature,  and  holds  communion  with  a 
pantheistic  deity  and  universal  soul. 

The  whole  German  development  of  feeling,  poetical  and 
social,  amidst  all  that  is  deep  and  sympathetic  in  it,  thus 
shows  one  great  defect.  In  the  love  of  nature  and  of  man 
alike,  one  principle,  for  which  the  Greek  language  has  a  conse¬ 
crated  name,  is  sadly  overborne.  Another  and  a  looser  spirit 
appears,  the  same  of  which  we  see  the  still  more  obvious  fruits 
in  the  direct  department  of  theology ;  the  same  which  has 
explained  away  inspiration,  reduced  the  Bible  to  legend,  dis¬ 
solved  the  Christian  creed,  and  left  a  void  for  the  human  mind  to 
fill  up  at  its  will.  Emptied  of  the  preserving  element  of  alScos, 
no  wonder  that  nature  turns  to  rankness,  and  feeling  to  disease 
— that  a  hollow  luxuriance  betrays  itself;  that  there  is  sin, 


428 


Luther . 


and,  as  surely  as  there  is  sin,  failure  and  disappointment. 
Christianity  has  developed  within  the  human  heart  a  vast 
and  boundless  desire  for  happiness,  a  noble  longing  passion  to 
which  the  pagan  world  was  comparatively  strange ;  but  alas 
for  those  who  forget  the  source  from  which  they  received  the 
passion,  and,  throwing  religious  awe  aside,  try  to  satiate  it  with 
earth  and  nature !  Nature,  tasked  beyond  her  powers,  gives 
way,  and  shows  her  hollowness  when  made  divine.  To  them 
no  sights  or  sounds  of  earth,  however  lovely,  no  beauty  of  land 
or  sky  or  sea,  no  human  sympathies  and  affections,  will  give 
even  an  ordinary  traveller’s  repose.  They  have  grasped  at  too 
much,  and  the  treasure  slips  out  of  their  hand.  With  all  its 
elevation  of  nature’s  beatific  powers,  and  tenderness  to  her 
children,  few  will  say  that  the  poetry  of  the  German  worship¬ 
pers  of  nature,  or  of  their  school  amongst  ourselves,  leaves,  on 
the  whole,  a  cheerful  impression  on  the  reader’s  mind.  Amidst 
the  glories  of  the  landscape,  and  beneath  the  full  meridian  sun 
itself,  faint  sighs  are  heard,  and  wailing  notes  float  past  upon 
the  breeze. 

“  When  on  the  threshold  of  the  green  recess 
The  wanderer’s  footsteps  fell,  he  knew  that  death 
Was  on  him  ...  he  did  place 
His  pale  lean  hand  upon  the  rugged  trunk 
Of  the  old  pine.  Upon  an  ivied  stone 
Reclined  his  languid  head  ;  bis  limbs  did  rest, 

Diffused  and  motionless,  on  the  smooth  brink 
Of  that  obscurest  chasm  : — and  thus  he  lay 
Surrendering  to  their  final  impulses 
The  hovering  powers  of  life.  Hope  and  despair, 

The  torturers,  slept :  no  mortal  pain  or  fear 
Marred  his  repose  ;  the  influxes  of  sense, 

And  bis  own  being  unalloyed  by  pain. 

Yet  feebler  and  more  feeble,  calmly  fed 
The  stream  of  thought,  till  he  lay  breathing  there 
At  peace,  and  faintly  smiling  : — his  last  sight 
Was  the  great  moon,  which  o’er  the  western  line 
Of  the  wide  world  her  mighty  horn  suspended, 

With  whose  dun  beams  inwoven  darkness  seemed 
To  mingle.”1 

Such  are  the  thoughts  in  which  the  disappointed  passion 
for  happiness  takes  refuge ;  the  consolations  of  a  mind  which 
has  drunk  too  deep,  and  come  to  the  dregs — which  has  found 

1  Shelley’s  Alastor. 


Luther. 


429 


the  hollowness  of  mere  nature  by  trying  her  too  much,  and  dis¬ 
covered  decay  and  death  amid  her  luxuriance  and  beauty. 

The  fund  of  amiableness  and  heartiness  in  Luther’s  character 
is  as  striking  a  fact  about  it  as  any  other,  public  or  private, 
and  that  is  saying  a  great  deal.  It  does  show  indeed  a  mar¬ 
vellous  richness  of  the  social  affections  and  sympathies.  It  is  a 
luxuriant  and  a  glowing  character ;  nor  did  fatalism  interfere 
with  it,  but  rather  helped  to  expand  it.  There  are  two  kinds 
of  fatalism,  dogmatical  and  poetical.  The  dogmatical  is  rigid, 
the  poetical  is  careless.  Calvin’s  fatalism,  was  dogmatical,  and 
gave  the  formal  mould,  and  gloomy  gait,  and  sour  physiog¬ 
nomy,  and  produced  puritanism.  Luther’s  fatalism  was  care¬ 
less,  and  set  him  at  his  ease.  It  was  a  fatalism  which  soothed 
the  feelings  rather  than  deadened  them,  and  softened  the  mind 
instead  of  souring  it.  It  said,  Carpe  diem  ;  evil  will  have  its 
way,  and  you  cannot  prevent  it,  do  what  you  will :  do  not 
afflict  yourself  then.  There  is  a  cycle  of  events,  and  you  cannot 
disturb  it.  Acquiesce  in  it  like  a  wise  man.  “  Sua  hora  cuique  ” 
“  Omnia  habent  suum  tempus If  evil  comes,  then  bear  it ;  if 
good,  enjoy  it.  “Joy  hath  its  hour,  as  all  things  else;  let  us 
enjoy  the  present,  and  not  be  tormented  about  the  future. 
Even  vices  cannot  be  mended  till  the  appointed  hour  of  amend¬ 
ment  comes.”  The  “  appointed  hour  ”  was  a  great  word  with 
Luther,  and  as,  advancing  into  years,  he  looked  back  upon  his 
past  life,  he  surveyed  with  calm  amusement  many  a  struggle 
against  (as  he  thought)  fate  and  impossibility  into  which  his 
youthful  impatience  had  betrayed  him.  He  observed  that  his 
own  efforts  to  correct  his  faults  had  never  answered  when  they 
were  untimely.  And  the  same  law  applied  to  the  treatment  of 
evil  in  others  too.  “  When  I  was  a  young  preacher,  I  seriously 
meditated  making  all  mankind  good  but  I  have  found  out  my 
mistake,  he  adds.  So,  when  he  was  a  young  monk,  he  fretted 
himself  at  the  injustice  he  saw  going  on  all  around  him ;  but 
now  he  saw  that  injustice  always  had  gone  on,  and  always 
would  go  on,  in  the  world.  He  now,  therefore,  gave  himself 
as  little  trouble  as  might  be  about  the  annoyances  of  life. 
“What  good  would  it  do  him  to  be  vexing  himself,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  about  the  Sacramentaries  and  sectarians  ?  ”  Thus, 


430 


Luther . 


underneath  a  fatalist  theory,  an  easy  good-nature  grew  and 
expanded,  and  warm  sympathies  and  a  fascinating  presence 
had  their  full  play.  Bitter  as  wormwood  to  his  foes,  Luther 
was  all  heart  and  love  to  friends  and  those  who  went  along 
with  him.  Let  it  only  appear  that  a  man  had  joined  them,  or 
made  himself  at  all  his  dependant,  and  his  generosity  was 
boundless.  Thus  the  genial  liberality  with  which  he  relieved 
the  crowds  of  poor  students  who  came  to  his  door,  parting  even 
with  the  accidental  ornament  off  his  table,  the  present  of  some 
prince,  for  money  to  give  them.  Thus  the  attention  with  which 
he  would  listen  to  poor  people,  with  their  stories  of  super¬ 
natural  troubles  and  foes.  An  old  lansknecht  “  complained 
to  him  of  the  manner  in  which  the  devil  constantly  assailed 
him  with  temptations  and  threats  of  carrying  him  through  the 
air.”  “  A  young  farrier  had  been  giving  out  in  the  neighbour¬ 
hood  that  he  was  haunted  by  a  spectre.  Luther  sent  for  the 
voung  man.”  Thus  the  social  evenings  at  the  “  Black  Eagle 

%j  O  O  O 

at  Wittenberg,”  where,  amidst  the  rounds  of  the  cup,  the 
“Table-talk”  was  produced.  The  jovial  and  hearty  equality 
on  which  he  puts  himself  with  others  endeared  him  to  com¬ 
panions,  as  his  compassion  and  charity  did  to  his  class  of  poor 
friends.  Wholly  without  the  airs  of  a  great  man,  free  as  air, 
easy  and  welcome  as  home,  he  radiated  social  heartiness  and 
comfort ;  and  men  were  happy  round  him  as  they  are  happy 
round  a  fire.  The  music  of  his  tongue,  the  brilliancy  and  fer¬ 
tility  of  his  humour,  and  all  his  social  gifts  and  talents,  delight¬ 
ful  in  themselves,  were  more  delightful  because  they  were  his  ; 
and  the  dispenser  of  rich  treats  was  himself  the  great  treat  of 
all.  The  unpretending  plainness  of  his  whole  way  of  living, 
always  bordering  on  actual  poverty  and  want,  but  borne  with 
the  most  cheerful  indifference,  was  a  constant  memento  in  his 
favour.  The  leader  of  the  age  and  the  adviser  of  princes, 
affecting  no  station  and  courting  no  great  men,  was  externally 
one  of  the  common  crowd,  and  the  plainest  of  it.  In  domestic 
life  the  same  heart  and  nature  appear.  There  he  overflows 
with  affection,  warmth,  tenderness ;  with  all  the  amiable  banter 
of  the  husband,  and  all  the  sweet  arts  and  pretty  nonsense  of 
a  father  among  his  little  children.  Whether  he  is  joking, 


Luther. 


43  1 

soothing,  lecturing  his  “  rib  Catharine,”  his  “  gracious  dame 
Catharine,”  or  writing  a  description  of  fairyland  and  horses 
with  silver  saddles  to  his  “  voracious,  hibacious,  loquacious  ” 
little  John,  or  whether  he  is  in  the  agony  of  grief  over  the 
deathbed  of  his  favourite  daughter  Margaret,  we  see  the  same 
exuberant  tender  character.  In  his  love  of  outward  nature 
the  same  exuberance  and  liveliness  appear.  There  is  a  quick 
poetical  sensibility  to  the  productive  powers  of  nature,  and  the 
earth’s  fertility  and  verdure.  The  “  beautiful  hough  loaded  with 
cherries  ”  appealed  to  him ;  the  amazing  effects  of  spring,  as 
he  walked  in  his  garden,  raised  overpowering  emotion.  “  Glory 
to  God,  who,  from  the  dead  creation,  thus  raises  up  life  again 
in  the  spring-time.  Behold  these  branches,  how  strong,  how 
beautiful  they  are  !  Already  they  teem,  and  are  big  with  the 
fruit  which  they  will  bring  forth.  They  offer  a  beautiful 
image  of  the  resurrection  of  all  men.  The  winter  season  re¬ 
presents  death,  the  summer-tide  the  resurrection.  Then  all 
things  live  again,  all  is  verdant.”  Thus  a  shower  was  delightful 
to  him ;  it  had  a  productive  renovating  power.  “  A  very  violent 
storm  occurred,  followed  by  beneficent  showers,  which  restored 
verdure  to  the  trees  and  to  the  earth.  Dr.  Martin,  turning  his 
eyes  towards  heaven,  said,  f  How  lovely  is  this  weather  !  Thou 
hast  granted  to  us,  0  Lord,  .this  bounty,  to  us  who  are  so  un¬ 
grateful  to  thee,  so  full  of  wickedness  and  avarice.  But  thou 
art  a  God  of  goodness  !  This  is  no  work  of  the  devil !  No,  it 
is  a  bounteous  thunder  which  shakes  the  earth  and  rouses  it, 
cleaving  it,  that  its  fruits  may  come  forth  and  spread  a  perfume 
like  to  that  which  is  diffused  by  the  prayer  of  a  pious 
Christian.’”  There  is  a  peculiar  play  of  fancy  and  humour, 
again,  in  his  love  of  nature,  which  reminds  us  strongly  of  the 
fancy  and  humour  of  the  modern  German ;  and  as  he  listens 
to  the  rooks  at  Wartburg,  and  imagines  them  holding  a  parlia¬ 
ment,  and  debating,  the  picture  of  the  grave  black  senators 
seems  almost  prophetic  of  the  pages  of  Andersen.  Luther’s 
love  of  music  was  part  of  the  same  character.  “  Music  was  the 
art  of  the  prophets,  and  ranked  next  to  theology ;  music  alone 
could  calm  the  agitations  of  the  soul  and  put  the  devil  to 
flight.”  Too  deep  a  lover  of  music  to  regard  it  as  a  mere 


432 


Luther. 


amusement  to  the  listener,  accomplishment  to  the  performer, 
he  associated  it  with  mind  and  moral  feeling,  aud  made  it  part 
of  religion.  He  entered  into  the  beauty  of  the  world  of  sound 
in  the  same  deep  sympathetic  way  in  which  he  entered  into 
the  beauty  of  the  world  of  sight.  His  taste  for  the  arts  and 
the  belles  lettres ,  from  his  early  affection  for  Virgil  and  Plautus 
to  his  acquaintance  with  Lucas  Cranach,  and  the  criticisms  on 
languages,  grammar,  Latin  writing,  the  drama,  painting,  uni¬ 
versities,  and  education,  in  the  Table-talk,  show  the  enlarged 
sympathy  which  says,  Nihil  humanum  a  me  alienum  jputo. 

But  with  all  this  richness  and  warmth  of  social  and  poetical 
nature  in  Luther,  there  was  too  evident  a  deficiency  of  that  one 
spirit  which  could  chasten  and  temper  it.  That  one  pledge  of 
safety  named  above  is  wanting.  While  we  admire  the  fulness 
of  the  domestic  sensibilities  in  him,  it  is  impossible  to  forget 
how  he  dealt  with  the  first  of  the  domestic  relations  ;  and  the 
sermon  de  Matrimonio,  and  the  license  to  Philip  of  Hesse, 
haunt  us  at  his  very  fireside.  The  domestic  sympathies  require 
a  regimen  ;  and  home,  if  it  is  a  sweet  and  welcome,  should  be 
a  severe  and  sanctified  place.  Hid  Luther  provide  for  that 
side  of  home  ?  It  cannot  be  said  that  he  did.  Without  fasten¬ 
ing  on  him  all  the  logical  consequences  of  his  matrimonial 
theory,  some  looseness  of  feeling  must  be  seen  underneath  it. 
The  model  of  a  severe  Christian  home  could  hardly  have  been 
in  the  mind  of  a  man  who  preached  that  sermon  and  gave  that 
license.  The  naked  claim  of  nature  demanding  the  lawful 
lawlessly  speaks  in  that  sermon  and  the  Table-talk.  The  rude 
invasion  of  a  sacred  blessing  was  hardly  not  suggestive  of  a 
self-willed  and  light  treatment  of  the  blessing  itself ;  and 
Luther  laid  the  foundation  of  his  social  and  domestic  temple 
ominously.  A  zeal  for  Old  Testament  precedent  might  urge 
the  punishment  of  death  for  violations  of  matrimonial  law,  but 
his  legislation  did  not  guard  itself  from  within,  and  by  its  owrn 
spirit.  He  unsettled  men’s  minds,  and  set  them  wandering. 
Invidious  as  the  remark  may  seem,  a  loose  unguarded  spirit  lay 
underneath  the  Lutheran  social  and  domestic  type,  ready  to 
betray  it  and  corrupt  it  as  time  ran  on,  and  a  too  luxuriant 
fulness  tended  from  the  beginning  to  disease.  The  fault  of  his 


Luther. 


433 


moral  exemplar  again  appeared,  only  in  another  shape,  in  his 
theological;  unguardedness  in  feeling  become  irreverence  in 
religion  ;  and  underneath  the  poetical  and  sympathetic  character 
lurked  the  sceptical  one,  which  rejected  parts  of  Scripture.  A 
natural  melancholy  completes  the  picture,  and  throws  a  dark 
shade  over  its  luxuriance  and  glow. 

Luther  was  a  German.  His  character,  combining  warmth 
with  looseness,  and  poetry  with  scepticism,  betrays  strongly 
the  German  type.  With  every  natural  gift  and  feeling  in  pro¬ 
fusion,  he  wanted  one  quality,  and  that  want  is  the  want  of 
moral  and  religious  Germany  at  this  day.  Not  chargeable, 
personally,  with  all  the  development  of  German  feeling  and 
intellect  since  his  time,  he  nevertheless  stands  before  us  too 
clearly  as  the  exemplar  which  that  development  has  carried  out 
and  expanded.  Not  the  absolute  originator  of  the  German 
character,  he  is  yet  its  striking  and  prophetic  representative, 
the  personifier  of  the  nation.  Luther  himself  half  felt  this 
position.  It  was  his  pride  that  he  was  a  German,  and  he 
gloried  in  the  conscious  impulse  he  was  giving  to  German 
intellect,  character,  and  language.  “  I  was  born  for  the  good 
of  my  dear  Germans,”  he  said,  “  and  I  will  never  cease  to  serve 
them.”  “  The  German  language  was  superior  to  all  others 
the  Germans  themselves  “  were  more  honest,  right,  and  true,” 
than  all  other  people.  “  We  are  all  jolly  fellows,  we  Germans  ; 
we  eat,  and  drink,  and  sing,  and  break  our  glasses,  and  lose,  at 
one  sitting,  an  hundred  or  a  thousand  florins.”  He  knew  the 
German  character,  and  he  sympathised  with  it  in  all  its  parts ; 
he  impersonated  it  with  that  truth  and  genuineness  which 
sympathy  supplies  ;  and  he  has  had  that  influence  over  it 
which  a  striking  impersonation  must  have.  Germany,  in  look¬ 
ing  up  to  him,  has  always  seen  herself,  and  has  been  flattered 
and  emboldened  by  the  image.  He  has  fixed  national  ten¬ 
dencies  which  might  otherwise  have  wavered,  and  he  has  given 
consistency  to  impulses,  and  direction  to  tastes.  He  has  given 
her  a  great  man,  of  whom  she  is  proud ;  and  all  parts  of  the 
German  mind  exult  in  him.  Students  sing  his  songs  at  table, 
and  congregations  his  hymns  in  church.  Luther’s  Commen¬ 
taries  and  Luther’s  Table-talk  fasten  on  their  respective  dis- 

M.E.-I.]  2  E 


434 


L  uther. 


ciples ;  and  German  piety,  mirth,  poetry,  affection,  German 
genius  and  industry,  German  enthusiasm  and  scepticism, 
German  light-heartedness  and  melancholy,  all  see  themselves 
reflected  in  their  comprehensive  prototype. 

Another  and  still  wider  sphere  of  Luther’s  influence  re¬ 
mains.  Besides  having  an  ^(9o?,  he  had  a  dogma,  and  that 
dogma  has  covered  a  much  larger  ground  than  the  national 
one  of  Germany. 

When,  in  the  commencement  of  this  article,  we  gave  an 
account  of  the  formation  and  nature  of  the  Lutheran  dogma  of 
justification  by  faith,  we  gave  it  in  the  full  and  extreme 
aspect  of  its  formal  and  definite  statement  :  we  took  Luther’s 
own  theological  account  of  his  own  dogma.  It  was  necessary 
to  do  this,  because  the  formal  account  of  a  thing,  if  it  is  not 
itself  the  true  and  genuine  one,  is  always  suggestive,  more  or 
less,  of  that  which  is.  It  is  always  significant  and  speaking. 
But  we  are  anxious  now,  before  concluding,  to  exchange  the 
more  formal  aspect  of  that  dogma  for  a  more  practical  one  ; 
though,  in  doing  this,  we  are  compelled,  at  the  same  time,  to 
assign  one  great  reason  for  it,  which  will,  at  first  sight,  look 
more  severe  than  considerate.  Formally  and  literally  stated, 
then,  the  Lutheran  dogma  of  justification  by  faith  is  so  incon¬ 
sistent  with  the  first  principles  of  common  sense  and  natural 
religion,  that,  in  this  shape,  no  human  being  can  possibly 
believe  it.  It  requires  us  to  believe  that  that  which  makes  a 
man  pleasing  to  God,  or  justifies  him,  has  nothing  to  do  with 
morality  or  goodness  in  him ;  and  being  moral  creatures,  we 
cannot  believe  this.  Luther  himself  could  not  believe  it,  or 
mean  practically  to  teach  it ;  and,  therefore,  the  question 
remains,  What  was  the  truth  he  practically  taught  ? 

What  Luther  practically  taught,  then,  in  the  dogma  of 
justification  without  works,  seems  to  have  been  a  particular 
view  against  formality,  accuracy,  and  anxiety  in  works.  It 
was  a  view  antagonistic  to  an  existing  and  authoritative  one. 
He  saw,  he  tells  us,  much  narrow  punctilious  formalism  in  the 
lives  and  practice  of  Christians  of  his  day ;  he  had  observed 
its  effects  upon  the  minds  of  many  religious  persons,  monks, 
and  others  ;  and  could  testify  that  it  debilitated  and  distorted, 


L  tit  her. 


435 


instead  of  strengthening  and  really  disciplining  them.  He 
speaks  of  deathbeds  he  had  seen,  where  the  results  of  this 
system  were  most  unfavourable ;  the  fact  being  quite  apparent 
that  individuals  had  gained  no  real  Christian  principle  or  faith 
by  it,  whatever  amount  of  self-denial  they  had  in  their  own 
way  undergone.  Nor  are  we  at  liberty  to  deny  all  credit  to 
such  testimony.  To  such  a  narrowly  scrupulous  formal  view 
of  works,  then,  Luther  opposed  himself ;  but  he  opposed  it  in 
his  usual  extreme  and  extravagant  way.  Not  content  with 
correcting  a  narrow  anxiety,  he  aimed  at  clearing  away  all 
anxiety  whatever.  He  would  fain  have  relieved  absolutely 
the  human  mind  of  its  burden,  and  divested  the  whole  idea 
of  duty  of  that  salutary  oppressiveness  and  fear  which  is 
essential  to  it. 

The  great  cause  of  fear  and  anxiety  in  connection  with 
works  is,  the  idea  of  their  conditional  place  in  the  process  of 
justification.  A  man  who  says  to  himself,  I  must  perform 
such  and  such  works,  in  order  to  stand  well  in  God’s  sight,  or 
be  a  justified  person,  is  necessarily  anxious  and  scrupulous 
about  performing  those  works.  On  the  contrary,  if  a  man  is 
justified,  or  is  in  God’s  favour  without  works,  then  whatever 
other  place  or  subsequent  importance  may  be  assigned  to 
works,  he  feels  tolerably  easy  about  them  ;  the  anxious  point 
is  passed,  and  he  can  afford  to  take  his  leisure.  This  was  the 
arrangement,  then,  which  the  Lutheran  dogma  of  justification 
made.1  Not  denying  all  place  to  good  works,  Luther  deprived 

1  ‘  Hoc  ideo  curiosius  observandum,  ne  errorem  erremus,  quem  Lutherus, 
et  post  eum  nostratium  theologorum  plerique,  in  disputationibus  suis  de 
justificatione  contra  pontificios,  nimio  contradicendi  sestu  abrepti,  in  ecclesias 
reformatas  maximo  earum  malo  invexerunt :  sc.  evangelium  ex  puris  putis 
pro  missis  constare  ;  Christum  dedisse  mundo  legem  nullam  ;  id  tan  turn 
egisse,  ut  legem  prius  latam  exponeret,  atque  a  pessimis  Scribarum  ac 
Pliarisseorum  commentis  assereret ;  legis  moralis  usum  eum  nunc  esse  unicum, 
ut  per  ipsam  homines  ad  fidem  Christi  adducantur,  vel  saltern  ut  sit  arbitraria 
qucedam  vivendi  regula,  a  Christo  quidem  nobis  commendata ,  cui  obtemperare  ex 
gratitudine  teneamur,  nequaquam  vero  sub  periculo  anirnce,  aut  tanquam  con¬ 
ditio  Novi  Foederis  ad  salutem  observatu  necessaria,  nobis  imposita.  Ex  his 
principiis,  incautius  ab  iis  positis,  atque  a  theologorum  vulgo  avide  arreptis, 
per  necessariam  consequentiam  deducta  fluxerunt  execrabilia  Antinomorum, 
Libertinorum,  Familistarum  atque  ejusdem  farinae  aliorum  dogmata,  de 
quibus  fortasse  boni  illi  viri  ne  per  somnium  quidem  cogitatunt.  Verum 
sutut  sit,  qui  talia  docent  et  tamen  in  Libertinos  magnis  clamoribus  vocifer- 


436 


Luther. 


them  of  their  conditional  place ;  he  took  from  them  all  con¬ 
temporary  action  in  the  process  of  justification,  and  gave  them 
a  subsequent  one.  “  I  allow,”  he  says,  “  that  good  works  also 
are  to  be  inculcated,  but  in  their  own  time  and  place  :  that  is 
to  say,  when  we  are  out  of  this  capital  article  of  justification.” 
“  I,  too,  say  that  faith  without  works  is  null  and  void but 
not,  he  adds,  “  that  faith  has  its  solidity  from  its  works,  but 
only  that  it  is  adorned  by  them.”  Christiani  non  fiunt  justi 
operando  justa ,  sed  jam  justijlcati  operantur  justa.  Wholly 
irrelevant  to  the  understanding  as  may  be  the  distinction  here 
drawn  between — the  necessity  of  good  works  being  acknow¬ 
ledged — their  necessity  prior  to  and  subsequent  to  the  act  of 
justification ;  practically,  we  see  a  meaning  and  a  difference. 
The  one  view  practically  attaches  less  anxiety  to  good  works 
than  the  other  does.  It  allows  the  mind,  reposing  upon  a 
justification  already  past  and  complete,  to  proceed  to  good 
works  as  a  sort  of  becoming  and  decorous  appendage  of  that 
state.  Thus  set  at  ease,  the  Christian  can,  if  he  likes,  fall  back 
upon  an  easier  and  more  casual  and  secular  class  of  good 
works  ;  and  Luther  advises  him  not  to  be  spiritually  ambitious. 
“  There  is  no  such  great  difference  between  a  good  Christian 
and  a  good  citizen  in  the  matter  of  works.  The  works  of  the 
Christian  are  in  appearance  mean.  He  does  his  duty  according 
to  his  calling  ;  governs  the  state,  rules  his  house,  tills  his 
field,  does  good  to  his  neighbour.”  1  Such  appears  to  be  the 


antur,  quid  aliud  agunt,  quam  ut,  dum  illos  damnant,  seipsos  condemn ent  ? 
Q.uippe  in  proemissas  consentiunt,  conclusionem  tantum  respuunt.  Ut  huic 
pessimo  errori  obviam  eatur,  illud  pro  certo  statuendum  est,  Christum  in  con- 
cione  a  Matthseo,”  etc.  etc. — Bull ,  Harmonia  Apostolica,  Dissert.  Prior ,  p.  40. 

1  “  Nec  ita  magnum  est  aiscrimen  inter  Christianum  et  hominem  civiliter 
bonum.  Nam  opera  Christiani  in  speciem  vilia  sunt.  Facit  officium  juxta 
vocationem  suam,  gubernat  rempublicam,  regit  domum,  colit  agrum,  consulit, 
largitur,  et  servit  proximo.  Ea  opera  carnalis  homo  non  magnifacit,  sed 
putat  esse  vulgaria  et  nihili,  quse  laici,  imo  gentiles,  etiam  faciant.  Mundus 
enim  non  percipit  ea  quse  Spiritus  Dei  sunt,  ideo  perverse  judicat  de  operibus 
piorum.  Monstrosam  illain  hypocritarum  superstitionem,  et  eorum  electitia 
opera,  non  solum  admiratur,  sed  etiam  religiose  de  eis  sentit,  et  ea  magnis 
impensis  fovet.  Contra  piorum  opera  (in  speciem  quidem  vilia  et  exilia 
tamen  vero  bona  et  accepta  Deo  cum  fiant  in  fide,  lsetitia  animi,  obedientia, 
et  gratitudine  erga  Deum)  tantum  abest  ut  agnoscat  esse  bona,  ut  etiam  vitu- 
peret  et  damnet  ea,  tanquam  suminam  impietatem  et  injustitiam.” — Comment, 
in  Gal.,  Opp.  vol.  v.  p.  377. 


Luther. 


437 


practical  upshot  and  meaning  of  Luther’s  dogma.  Not  ab¬ 
solutely  denying  the  fundamental  truth  of  natural  religion, 
that  man  should  do  good  works,  the  practical  doctrine  makes 
the  distinction  between  one  class  of  works  and  another,  and 
one  mode  of  doing  them  and  another. 

This  dogma  of  justification,  then,  has  unquestionably  had 
an  important  and  influential  career,  and  Luther  has  succeeded 
in  impressing  an  idea  very  deeply  and  fixedly  upon  a  theologi¬ 
cal  posterity.  It  covers  all  Protestant  Germany,  Denmark, 
Sweden,  and  Norway ;  it  has  always  had,  and  has  now,  a  con¬ 
siderable  reception  within  our  own  Church.  Its  effects  are  too 
apparent ;  and  wherever  the  idea  of  works  as  mere  appendages 
to  a  state  of  justification  extends,  it  is  seen  to  ease  anxiety 
about  them ;  a  popular  view  of  their  practical  unimportance 
arises,  and  displaces  them  as  regular  marks  by  which  Chris¬ 
tians  are  to  be  distinguished  from  the  world.  It  is  difficult  to 
over-estimate  the  power  of  a  dogma  which  brings  to  a  point, 
and  concentrates  in  one  definite  and  portable  distinction,  a 
whole  mass  of  vague  thought  and  inclination,  existing  at  large 
in  human  nature.  With  a  basis  of  such  a  kind  to  support  it, 
the  pointed  statement  lays  marvellous  hold  upon  minds,  pene¬ 
trates  them,  and  becomes  their  central  informing  principle. 
Our  divines  as  a  body  have  indeed  done  their  duty  with  respect 
to  this  idea,  and  have  exposed  its  one-sidedness  and  hollowness, 
its  opposition  to  Scripture  and  to  reason,  and  they  have  pre¬ 
vented  English  Lutheranism  or  Calvinism,  though  it  has  gained 
extensive  influence,  from  getting  predominance.  To  one,  more 
especially,  the  English  Church  owes  her  thanks,  one  whose 
exceeding  clearness,  vigour,  and  solidity,  though  running  into 
occasional  prolixity  and  minuteness,  is  well  adapted  to  defend 
the  truths  of  reason  and  Scripture.  In  the  pages  of  Bishop 
Bull  we  are  in  a  world  of  substance  and  reality,  by  the  side  of 
which  the  theology  he  was  opposing  appears  like  a  dream.  But 
the  Lutheran  dogma  goes  on,  being  the  comfort  and  stay,  the 
one  Christian  creed,  the  one  religion  of  many  minds.  Eor  the 
long  continuance  of  such  an  idea  it  would  be  vain  to  attempt 
any  philosophical  account.  We  see  the  facts  before  us,  and 
must  be  mainly  content  with  them.  It  would  be  still  more 


438 


Luther. 


idle  to  prophesy  than  to  explain.  The  Lutheran  dogma,  how¬ 
ever,  can  only  stand  by  the  suppression  of  a  large  part  of 
Scripture,  and  it  seems  reasonable  to  expect  that  any  part  of 
Scripture  which  is  violently  overborne  must  vindicate  itself 
at  last. 


NOTE. 

(Page  319.) 

With  respect  to  this  and  other  charges,  some  light  was 
attempted  to  be  thrown  by  the  Rev.  Samuel  Say,  a  Presbyterian 
minister,  and  successor  to  Dr.  Calamy  at  Westminster,  in  his 
painstaking  and  conscientious  endeavour  to  draw  the  character  of 
Oliver  Cromwell’s  grand-daughter,  Mrs.  Bridget  Bendish.  To 
this  lady  he  seems  to  have  stood  in  the  harassing  and  embarrassing 
relation  of  spiritual  adviser.  The  following  description  is  taken 
from  a  work  entitled  Letters  by  several  eminent  Persons  deceased , 
including  the  Correspondence  of  John  Hughes,  Esq.,  and  several  of 
his  Friends ,  1772,  to  the  second  volume  of  which  it  is  added  in  an 
appendix.  “  This  paper  was  written,”  says  the  editor,  “  in  1719, 
on  occasion  of  the  closing  words  of  Lord  Clarendon’s  character 
of  her  grandfather,  viz.  ‘  He  will  be  looked  upon  by  posterity 
as  a  brave  wicked  man.’  ” 

“  The  character  of  Oliver  seems  to  be  made  up  of  so  many 
inconsistencies  that  I  do  not  think  any  one  is  capable  of  drawing 
it  justly  who  was  not  personally  and  thoroughly  acquainted  with 
him,  or  at  least  with  his  grand-daughter,  Mrs.  Bridget  Bendish,  the 
daughter  of  his  son-in-law  Ireton ;  a  lady  who,  as  in  the  features 
of  her  face  she  exactly  resembled  the  best  picture  of  Oliver  which 
I  have  ever  seen,  and  which  is  now  at  Rose  Hall,  in  the  possession 
of  Sir  Robert  Rich,  so  she  seems  also  as  exactly  to  resemble  him  in 
the  cast  of  her  mind. 

“A  person  of  great  presence  and  majesty,  heroic  courage,  and 
indefatigable  industry ;  and  with  something  in  her  countenance 
and  manner  that  at  once  attracts  and  commands  respect  the 
moment  she  appears  in  company  ;  accustomed  to  turn  her  hands  to 
the  meanest  offices,  and  even  drudgeries  of  life,1  among  her  work¬ 
men  and  labourers,  from  the  earliest  morning  to  the  decline  of 
day;  insensible  to  all  the  necessities  of  nature,  and  in  a  habit 
and  appearance  beneath  the  meanest  of  them,  and  neither  suiting 
her  character  or  sex ;  and  then  immediately,  after  having  eaten 

1  Salt-works. 


440 


Note . 


and  drunk,  almost  to  excess,  of  whatever  is  before  her,  without 
choice  or  distinction,  to  throw  herself  down  on  the  next  couch  or 
bed  that  offers,  in  the  profoundest  sleep  ;  to  rise  from  it  with  new 
life  and  vigour ;  to  dress  herself  in  all  the  riches  and  grandeur  of 
appearance  that  her  present  circumstances,  or  the  remains  of  better 
times,  will  allow  her  ;  and  about  the  close  of  evening  to  ride  in  her 
chaise,  or  on  her  pad,  to  a  neighbouring  port,1  and  there  shine  in 
conversation,  and  to  receive  the  place  and  precedence  in  all  com¬ 
pany,  as  a  lady  who  once  expected  at  this  time  to  have  been  one 
of  the  first  persons  in  Europe ;  to  make  innumerable  visits  of  cere¬ 
mony,  business,  or  charity ;  and  despatch  the  greatest  affairs  with 
the  utmost  ease  and  address,  appearing  everywhere  as  the  common 
friend,  advocate,  and  patroness  of  all  the  poor,  the  oppressed,  and 
the  miserable  in  any  kind ;  in  whose  cause  she  will  receive  no 
denial  from  the  great  and  the  rich ;  rather  demanding  than 
requesting  them  to  perform  their  duty ;  and  who  is  generally 
received  and  regarded,  by  those  who  know  her  best,  as  a  person  of 
great  sincerity,  piety,  generosity,  and  even  profusion  of  charity. 
And  yet,  possessed  of  all  these  virtues,  and  possessed  of  them  in  a 
degree  beyond  the  ordinary  rate,  a  person  (I  am  almost  tempted  to 
say)  of  no  truth,  justice,  or  common  honesty;  who  never  broke  her 
promise  in  her  life,  and  yet  on  whose  word  no  man  can  prudently 
depend,  nor  safely  report  the  least  circumstance  after  her. 

“  Of  great  and  most  fervent  devotion  towards  God,  and  love  to 
her  fellow-creatures  and  fellow- Christians  ;  and  yet  there  is  scarce 
an  instance  of  impiety  or  cruelty  of  which  perhaps  she  is  not 
capable. 

“  Fawning,  suspicious,  mistrustful,  and  jealous  without  end 
of  all  her  servants,  and  even  of  her  friends  ;  at  the  same  time  that 
she  is  ready  to  do  them  all  the  service  that  lies  in  her  power ; 
affecting  all  mankind  generally,  not  according  to  the  service  they 
are  able  to  do  to  her,  but  according  to  the  service  their  necessities 
and  miseries  demand  from  her  ;  to  the  relieving  of  which,  neither 
the  wickedness  of  their  characters,  nor  the  injuries  they  may  have 
done  to  herself  in  particular,  are  the  least  exception,  but  rather  a 
peculiar  recommendation. 

“  Such  are  the  extravagances  that  have  long  appeared  to  me  in 
the  character  of  this  lady,  whose  friendship  and  resentment  I  have 
felt  by  turns  for  a  course  of  many  years’  acquaintance  and  intimacy; 
and  yet,  after  all  these  blemishes  and  vices,  which  I  must  freely 
own  in  her,  he  would  do  her,  in  my  opinion,  the  greatest  injury, 
who  should  say,  she  was  a  great  wicked  woman  :  for  all  that  is  great 
and  good  in  her  seems  to  be  owing  to  a  true  magnanimity  of 

1  Yarmouth. 


Note. 


44 1 


spirit,  and  a  sincere  desire  to  serve  the  interest  of  God  and  all 
mankind  ;  and  all  that  is  otherwise,  to  wrong  principles,  early  and 
strongly  imbibed  by  a  temperament  of  body  (shall  1  call  it  1)  or  a 
turn  of  mind  to  the  last  degree  enthusiastic  and  visionary. 

“  It  is  owing  to  this,  that  she  never  hears  of  any  action  of  any 
person,  but  she  immediately  mingles  with  it  her  own  sentiments  and 
judgment  of  the  person,  and  the  action,  in  so  lively  a  manner,  that 
it  is  almost  impossible  for  her  to  separate  them  after  ;  which  senti¬ 
ments  therefore,  and  judgment,  she  will  relate  thenceforwards 
with  the  same  assurance  that  she  relates  the  action  itself. 

“  If  she  questions  the  lawfulness  or  expediency  of  any  great, 
hazardous,  and  doubtful  undertaking,  she  pursues  the  method, 
which,  as  she  says,  her  grandfather  always  employed  with  success; 
that  is,  she  shuts  herself  up  in  her  closet,  till  by  fasting  and  prayer 
the  vapours  are  raised,  and  the  animal  spirits  wrought  up  to  a 
peculiar  ferment,  by  an  over-intenseness  and  strain  of  thinking ; 
and  whatever  portion  of  Scripture  comes  into  her  head  at  such  a 
season,  which  she  apprehends  to  be  suitable  to  the  present  occasion 
(and  whatever  comes  in  such  circumstances  is  sure  to  come  with 
a  power  and  evidence  which,  to  such  a  heated  imagination,  will 
appear  to  be  divine  and  supernatural),  thenceforward  no  entreaties 
nor  persuasions,  nor  force  of  reason,  nor  plainest  evidence  of  the 
same  Scriptures  alleged  against  it ;  no  conviction  of  the  impro¬ 
priety,  injustice,  impiety,  or  almost  impossibility  of  the  thing,  can 
turn  her  from  it ;  which  creates  in  her  a  confidence  and  industry 
that  generally  attains  its  end,  and  hardens  her  in  the  same  practice 
for  ever.  4  She  will  trust  a  friend  that  never  deceived  her.’  This 
was  the  very  answer  she  made  me  when,  upon  her  receiving  a 
considerable  legacy  at  the  death  of  a  noble  relation,  I  urged  her  to 
suspend  her  usual  acts  of  piety,  generosity,  and  charity,  upon  such 
occasions,  till  she  had  been  just  to  the  demands  of  a  poor  woman, 
and  had  heard  the  cries  of  a  family  too  long  kept  out  of  their 
money  :  4  for  how,’  said  I,  4  if  you  should  die  and  leave  such  a  debt 
undischarged,  which  no  one  will  think  himself  obliged  to  pay,  after 
the  decease  of  a  person  from  whom  they  have  no  expectations  1  ’ 
She  assured  me  she  would  never  die  in  any  one’s  debt.  4  But  how  is 
it  possible  you  should  be  assured  of  that,  who  are  for  ever  in  debt  to 
so  many  persons,  and  have  so  many  other  occasions  for  your  money 
than  discharging  of  your  debts,  and  are  resolved  to  have  so  many 
as  long  as  you  live  ?  ’  Her  answer  was  as  before  mentioned. 

[Added  after  her  death.~\ 

44  And  the  event  justified  her  conduct;  if  anything  could  justify 
a  conduct  which  reason  and  revelation  must  condemn. 

m.e.-i.]  2  F 


442 


Note. 


u  Such  was  this  grand-daughter  of  Oliver,  who  inherited  more  of 
his  constitution  of  body,  and  complexion  of  mind,  than  any  other 
of  his  descendants  and  relations  with  whom  I  have  happened  to 
be  acquainted.  And  I  have  had  some  acquaintance  with  many 
others  of  his  grandchildren  ;  and  have  seen  his  son  Richard,1 
and  Richard’s  son  Oliver/  who  had  something  indeed  of  the  spirit 
of  his  grandfather ;  but  all  his  other  distinguishing  qualifications 
seemed  vastly  inferior  to  the  lady  whose  character  I  have  sincerely 
represented  as  it  has  long  appeared  to  S.  S.” 

1  Richard  died  at  Cheshunt  in  Hertfordshire,  July  13,  1712,  aged  86. 

2  William  Cromwell,  Esq.,  son  of  this  Oliver,  and  great-grandson  of  the 
Protector,  died  in  Kirby  Street,  Hatton  Garden,  unmarried,  on  July  9,  1772, 
aged  85. 


(EtJtnburgfj  3Smbersttg 

THOMAS  AND  ARCHIBALD  CONSTABLE,  PRINTERS  TO  HER  5UJESTT. 


t 


I 


'•  .  .  . 

■  ■  iii  i  -■:■■■  . 


